Posted on 02/22/2012 5:46:16 PM PST by ConservativeStatement
Only half of U.S. citizens pay federal income tax, according to the latest available figures.
In 2009, just 50.5 per cent of Americans paid any income tax to the federal government - the lowest proportion in at least half a century.
And the number of people outside the tax system could have climbed even higher since as the economic downturn has continued to bite and unemployment has remained high.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
There talking federal taxes. You know the big refund checks that people get every year. I wish I could get one. lol. Although I pretty much have my taxes down to a science. I don’t get any back but I don’t have to write a check. So the only taxes they get from me for federal is what they take out of the check every month.
However, why is a person who agreed to make 30,000 dollars a year for a family of four ending up making 34,000 dollars a year after their refund? That EIC MUST GO. That is the worst thing on Earth and totally ridiculous. Pay zero is not great but giving somone elses money to them is dreadful.
Wealth is not what you earn but what you keep.
I assume the term applies to “households”, to those who are competent adults in a position to at least fill out a 1040EZ to declare they have no taxable income (and probably a refundable credit to boot, which is the real problem). Methinks when you account for children, dependents, nonworking spouses, retirees, welfare, etc the real percentage of federal revenue contributors is scary low.
100 years ago, 100% of Americans didn’t pay income taxes.
” - - - The Heritage Foundation argues that the reduction in the number of taxpayers will create an electorate dominated by non-taxpayers, who will always support higher taxes and spending because their own money is not at stake.”
Is this what Obama means by his term “expanding the tax base?” Seems clear to me that whatever The Obamanator says, the opposite is true.
“Since every working American pays 15% of their wages in social security income taxes and Medicare income taxes, who are these 50.5% of Americans?”
I don’t buy this either. If you add all the taxes, including taxes on taxed income on taxed income, the numbers are absolutely frightening, particularly on the East Coast. Where I live, I can’t go to the bathroom in my own house without paying a school tax, in a bathroom on which I pay property (predominantly school) tax, using income from which I pay a school tax (we have local taxes).
Basically, if you are not living as a hobo, hermit, or as a seriously hard-core survivalist, the “floor” is probably around 15%, depending on where you live, and it goes up from there.
Lower taxes substantially by eliminating government spending, waste and dramatically cut the sized of government at all levels.
While were at it, eliminate the unionization of government employees at every level.
Those are Federal income taxes being discussed, not FICA (social security) nor Medicare.
Historically, FICA and Medicare were considered to be "payroll taxes" since they were thought of as "insurance," where you will eventually get back what you paid in. Income tax was thought to fund the government.
And the Earned Income Tax credit was designed to "refund" the FICA and Medicare taxes paid.
Mark
Also, either totally eliminated property taxes, or dramatically reduce them.
Mark
I believe that there are now more Dept of Agriculture employees than there are farmers in the US.
Mark
I could point out that they may not have anything to file on a 1040, but they are still chipping in to the behemoth if they buy anything, as corporate income taxes are part of product prices.
Half of them are doling out food stamps....
Study: 70% of Texas’ illegal immigrant families receive welfare
no wonder mexico is shooing them out
It’s so easy...
bttt
A sophisticated MODERN user fee system would simply allocate the costs of a government service to the users, each of whom would pay an appropriate share.
GIve you an example of such a user fee ~ POSTAGE!
Well, that was an obvious one. Now, how about this. People mail pornography ~ not as much these days as formerly (due to the internet) ~ but they do, and within that group are several fairly large businesses who mail a lot of porn.
The law requires that in case of a complaint from some downstream "user" or "recipient" the address of that complainant be added to a list of complainants. At the end of the year (or quarterly) the list is "sold" to the major porn producers ~ who then delete those addresses from from their files.
The people who need the list end up paying for it. USPS recovers its costs for producing the list. The people who don't want the porn then get dropped from the mailing lists and everybody is happy.
There's no reason most of Commerce and the Labor Departments can't be handled the same way. HHS certainly is open to that sort of thing ~ my goodness, look at their customer base ~ hospitals, doctors, medical insurance companies, state governments, etc. That's where the money is. Why go after Aunt Mary who makes $30,000 per year and lives in a shack in Mississippi when you can tap Johns Hopkins?
Let's look at the EXPENSE SIDE of government and the people who generate that expense to see who ought to pay the costs.
Note, when it comes to "grants", they'd just disappear ~ anything requiring a "grant" would turn into a state responsibility.
BTW, the federal highway funding system is also a "user fee" based operation. It needs "toned up" a bit to make it more equitable of course, but there's no reason for anyone's income to be tapped to build highways when there's all that traffic to pay.
We can even allocate the cost incurred by DOD in defending the seaways for commercial traffic ~
In the long run that had no real effect other than a social one. Your small time investor could buy a modest property and use depreciation to totally offset his rents AND his own outside income. In a couple of decades he'd be relatively wealthy from his holdings.
It was a way up for people of modest means ~ but that got cut off. As I recall it was the Democrats in Congress who demanded that modification to the tax rules ~ they also went after Veterans on the "double dipping" issue. Here we had several million men who'd been forcibly drafted into the military for the Nam War and some of them got government jobs later on. The Democrats didn't want any of them to draw both military and government retirements (which meant they wanted to discount your two years draft experience from your Social Security if you ever acquired it). There's an existing tax on military service out there ~ that should be abolished.
Now both of those impacts ~ elimination of accelerated depreciation and the tax on double-dipping went after the wealth accumulation opportunities of folks at the bottom end of the income scale.
Need I say more? The Democrats hate the working poor!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.