Posted on 09/18/2012 6:42:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney's latest campaign setback is a leaked video that shows him slagging the 47 percent of the population who, he says, will always vote for Barack Obama, because they want everything for free from the government.
The 47 percent number presumably refers to the percent of the population who don't pay Federal Income Taxes, which of course is just one kind of tax.
From the Tax Policy Center, these three pie charts show who those people are.
Kevin Roose at NYMag puts the data into words:
But back to the 47 percent. There are two primary ways to pay no (or negative) federal income taxes. The first is to be poor, and the second is to be elderly. In 2011, of the 18.1 percent of American households who paid no federal tax (meaning, no federal income or payroll tax), more than half were elderly, and most of the other half were non-elderly people making below $20,000 a year. The other sliver, roughly one in 20 non-payers, were people who made more than $20,000 in household income.
The reason being poor helps is because, with a combination of tax credits (like the earned income credit and the child credit) and deductions, many people earning under $20,000 a year can zero out their overall rate. The primary reason being elderly helps is that Social Security benefits aren't taxed as income, so if all (or most) of your income comes from your monthly Social Security check, your taxable income is marginal or non-existent.
So there you have it. The poor and elderly.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Now show the graph with the earned income tax credit included to see whether the total net federal tax (income tax + payroll tax - EITC) is zero or negative. That would chew into the 28% who don’t pay income tax but do pay a payroll tax.
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great point. did they actually pay even $1, in NET tax?
and, i’d like to know how many illegals get refunds higher than they pay...
..because voters demand that they lie and tell them they earned it.
It's like the girlfriend who only puts out when guys lie to her and are only attracted to liars, she says that the honest guys are boring to her. But she always says she hates guys that lie.
Neither Romney, nor anyone that isn’t of the “democrat base”, is as stupid as it would be necessary to be to believe what you posted - that he was including the working but non-incometaxpaying folks as “freeloaders”.
The Herman Cain factor vs Obama would have been a hoot to watch. I liked the guy. It’s sad it turned out like it did.
How many of those pay their federal taxes???
And how may of those are part of Romney's 47%???
We're talking 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.
(Obama has now eliminated the job search requirement)
We're talking record food stamp recipients.
We're talking record disability recipients.
Ostensibly, they fall in the 53% shown and ceded-to by the author (then totally discarded). His point in the article is to make out like the cause for the 47% is solely due to the 'really poor' and the 'elderly' (a sympathetic term, isn't it?)
He then proceeds to totally discount the percentage of 47%' ers that pay what he and Democrats lovingly call "payroll" taxes as if they are actual 'cart pullers' instead of USERs. Actually, giving them double-credit for their payments, both as taxes, and as payments to SS/Medicare.
The truth is that half this country is on the dole, period. They pay no taxes that actually are intended for running the country, ineptly as it has been run, and they are simultaneously claiming (trying to) extra benefits from double-counted payments. It is disgusting. Leeches and users. This isn't the country in which we grew up (well, at least for me, anyway). It is overrun by leeches, moochers and no-accounts that offer no value added whatsoever.
But remember Obama's "bitter clingers" and other gaffes from 2008? That and other gaffes by him did diddly squat as far as determining the election. Now the press is screaming and hollering that Romney's "gaffes' are killing his chances. Most average Democrats are obtusely ignorant (the ignorati) and don't follow any news much less what Republican candidates say in speeches private or public. The bitter truth is: events and real situations i.e. foreign policy and economics determine elections. I doubt this supposed gaffe i.e. speaking the truth by Romney will influence the election one iota.
It’s not FAIR that the non-taxpayers get to vote but have not skin in the game!
The real missing info here is the number of people who are in a NEGATIVE INCOME TAX position:
A significant number of people qualify for a REFUNDABLE credit, like the Earned Income Credit or the Making Work Pay tax credit. They not only have no income tax liability, both of these credits are refundable.
Say, for example, their total tax liability was $1,000. Below that line, the form totals the amount withheld or paid in, and several tax credits. Let’s say they paid in $900, and then got an EIC of $800. A $1,000 tax bill, less their tax payments of $900 and less their $800 EIC, and they get $700 refund. THAT is a negative income tax.
I will bet the statistics do no show these people as getting government assistance, but in fact, they do. These are transfer payments.
Of course they won't.
Shout it out, over and over and over again.
Payroll tax is calculated on what? One's ability to work?
one's ability to get to work on time?
The amount of actual hours worked?
perhaps on the type of job one does?
Oh, wait, it is calculated based on the total gross amount of money one earns in a given time frame, ie, one's earning, gross earning.
From that, the boss deducts, for the employee, per schedule printed on government booklet, entitled income tax schedule.
The amount deducted, is based on the total income. It is a amount of money that is on a sliding scale, taking more out as the amount earned is increased.
It is a levy placed against one's gross earnings.
The govt long ago decided that taking out a per cent per check was much easier to get past the masses than one check a year, or quarter.
So, it is not called an income tax, it is merely a payroll tax, on income.
See the beauty of the plan?
Now, in case the payroll tax was erroneously calculated too low, there is another hurdle, the actual "income tax", to be calculated at the end of the year, based on deductions and the like (placed there by representatives as a favor to their constituents).it is after all not calculated on your payroll, bur your income.
See the difference?
Instead of payroll taxes, they should be referred to as entitlement taxes whenever possible so the purpose is more accurately described.
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
” The Herman Cain factor vs Obama would have been a hoot to watch. I liked the guy. It’s sad it turned out like it did.”
Yes. I wanted Cain too. A conservative with business talent. He was by far the best to destroy Obama as well. I still believe the Rove/GOPe did him in.
Is the problem that they pay no taxes at their income level or is the problem that we just have too many underworked and overpaid people at all levels of government who want to be paid to run the country.
google “100 or 110 million” on the dole and see that there are that many getting some sort of government assistance NOT associated with Social Security or Medicare and judge for yourself.
Based on this and approximately 330 million or so population juxtaposed against the 47% and a rough guess is 2/3 of the 47% are leeches and the 1/3 is the ‘other’ probably are a combination of ‘some work’ and maybe some retired.
It's not FAIR that underworked overpaid government employees get to vote because they are the recipients of all of that skin.
I heard he had a way with the ladies too. He wasnt shy LOL
Whether or not SS benefits are taxable depends on current income, with the taxable portion of SS benefits capped at 85% total benefits.
For example this year a married couple filing jointly would pay no income tax on SS benefits if their total income is less than $32,000.
http://taxes.about.com/od/income/qt/Social_Security.htm
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