Posted on 04/12/2003 7:49:12 AM PDT by vannrox
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:36:05 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Last fall, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial entitled "The Non-Taxpaying Class." The editorial, which dubbed those too poor to pay taxes "lucky duckies," won the Journal widespread ridicule from big-hearted egalitarians throughout the world of media and punditry.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Please tell me how this scenario won't happen.
Read the link to fairtax.org it explains how. Educate yourself; don't let other people tell you what to think.
What, then, is the effect of taxing wealth and subsidizing poverty?
I agree in total. But I find his calculations on percent of taxes paid by the various classes to be quite distorted. But what is most missing is any reference to accurate figures on which classes pay a greater percent of their expected income in taxes. I use the word 'expected' because that is the amount reasonably calculated, anticipated and settled upon at the point of exchange. If these figures were used, one would find that lower income earners, pay a higher percent in taxes, than do higher income earners (and that does not include sin taxes).
Hmm, I have a few questions. Is the payroll tax, sales tax, property tax (possibly included in the rent) included in this tax burden? If it is not what whould be actual number otherwise?
Likewise, are the income taxes, property taxes, business taxes, etc., of all the various workers that went into making and marketing a loaf of bread, proportionally included in the taxes paid by the consumer who purchased that loaf of bread? Of course they are not. The article says nothing that relates to the real world.
And so the seesaw will swing back and forth, back and forth, while our rights go spiraling round and round, down and down. To pay for what? More tax specialists and civil servants.
1. That would be double counting. The income taxes paid by the bread baker are already accounted for in the article (like those of everyone else in the country).
2. The article has nothing to do with property & business taxes.....so including them in your question is N/A.
Exactly! The national sales tax is a wooden nickel if I've ever seen one.
Noooooooooooo way!
Not necessarily. It can be double counting. But it does not have to be. Furthermore, as I presented it, it was not double counting.
The article has nothing to do with property & business taxes.....so including them in your question is N/A.
You are correct that the article had nothing to do with property and business taxes. But your claim that it is not applicable is wrong. The article presented a claim that the "tax burden is climbing higher and higher up the income ladder." It uses the income tax to prove its point. My reply was saying that using the income tax to prove the location of the burden, is misleading, if not totally inaccurate. What I was pointing out, was who it actually was that is paying the tax. I carefully emphasized the word "expected" (in reply#24), so as to prevent your confusion. You must have missed it.
For further clarity, I will however concede that I did not link my reply in #24 to #25 (as intended). Had I done so, it would have been clearer, that I was referring to percentage of individual incomes used to pay the tax burden. Sorry.
That is what I was suspecting. This article is misleading by hiding the real tax burden which poor have to carry.
You are right. Baker already accounted for those taxes and included them in the price of bread which the poor person has to pay, so in this misleading article the burden will be credited to the baker.
Superbly concise. No waste of verbage. Directly to the point.
Of course this does not apply in all cases (i.e. the incompetent). But as a general rule of thumb, it is the consumer who shoulders the burden of the taxes, with lower incomes paying a higher percent.
This article is misleading by hiding the real tax burden which poor have to carry.
A picture of the Total Federal Tax rates paid vs gross individual income.
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1545&from=4&sequence=0:
Looking at the CBO table for Total Federal Tax Rates paid by individuals directly (income, payroll, & excise taxes) and indirectly as distributed through purchases, rent, etc.
Table 1. |
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Income Category | 1977 | 1979 | 1981 | 1983 | 1985 | 1987 | 1989 | 1991 | 1993 | 1995 | Projected 1999 |
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Effective Total Federal Tax Rate (In percent of gross individual income) | |||||||||||
Lowest Quintile | 8.7 | 8.4 | 8.0 | 8.5 | 10.2 | 9.0 | 8.8 | 7.9 | 7.8 | 6.0 | 4.6 |
Second Quintile | 14.7 | 14.9 | 15.0 | 14.2 | 15.5 | 15.2 | 15.3 | 15.1 | 14.3 | 14.6 | 13.7 |
Middle Quintile | 18.5 | 19.2 | 19.5 | 18.2 | 18.8 | 18.5 | 18.9 | 18.9 | 19.1 | 19.7 | 18.9 |
Fourth Quintile | 20.9 | 22.1 | 22.9 | 21.0 | 21.3 | 21.2 | 21.5 | 21.6 | 22.0 | 22.5 | 22.2 |
Highest Quintile | 28.2 | 28.5 | 27.9 | 24.6 | 24.5 | 26.4 | 25.9 | 26.2 | 27.6 | 29.6 | 29.1 |
All Families | 22.8 | 23.4 | 23.5 | 21.4 | 21.8 | 22.6 | 22.5 | 22.6 | 23.5 | 24.7 | 24.2 |
Top 10 Percent | 30.7 | 30.5 | 29.0 | 25.2 | 25.1 | 27.6 | 26.8 | 27.2 | 29.0 | 31.3 | 30.6 |
Top 5 Percent | 33.4 | 32.6 | 30.1 | 25.7 | 25.5 | 28.5 | 27.4 | 27.9 | 30.2 | 33.0 | 31.8 |
Top 1 Percent | 39.7 | 37.3 | 31.7 | 26.9 | 26.2 | 30.2 | 28.1 | 29.1 | 32.5 | 36.5 | 34.4 |
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Now is it possible to see the distribution of total tax burden including local and state taxes, sales taxes etc ... (Tax burden and government spending can be split through federal/local structure but the benefits and hardship are one thing.)
Is it hard to obtain?
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