Rich pay more taxes...duh!

Some brief thoughts about the environment, why are large international companies planning for man induced climate change? Why is the US military in their long range plans that they publish every year planning for man induced climate change? And especially why are insurance companies also planning for man induced climate change?

If, as the deniers claim, there is no such thing as man induced climate change, why then are all these groups planning for it? Do they know something the deniers don’t know?

Taxes

A lot of people get confused when doing the math concerning who pays the most in income taxes. On the right the argument is that the wealthy pay the majority of income taxes. Well duh i say.

If you have the top 1% making more money than 150,000,000 million people at the bottom end of the pay scale of course they will pay more, even when taxed at a lower rate because they make more than all those people combined. Remember that salient fact…they make more money than all those people combined.

The real problem is that the middle class pays more in taxes than those making over $1,000,000 a year and that just isn’t right which is why the Buffet Rule is so popular with 73% of the country according to Public Policy Polling. Even middle class Republicans like this rule.

Loopholes in our tax code allow the super wealthy who can afford to take advantage of them get away with paying a lower percentage in tax.

Example…the rich guy makes $1000 and pays $100 in taxes which equals 10%

                   The poor guy makes $10 and pays $2 in taxes which equals 20%

Who pays a higher percentage of their income in taxes?

To make the percentages equal the rich guy should be paying $200 in taxes and yes it looks like more money but percentage wise it isn’t.

Some will argue that 40% of the population pays no Federal income tax at all. i’m not sure if those statistics are true but let’s look at it. All those workers are paying payroll tax (paid by those making less than $106,000/year), sales tax, state tax etc. They are not getting off scott free. In fact the bottom 40%(120,000,000 million Americans) own a mere 0.3% of the wealth while the top 20% own 85% of the nations wealth.

In 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. (See Norris, 2010, for more details.) They only get taxed the same as the rest of us on that 19% the other 81% is taxed at a lower rate.

One of the problems with taxes and the arguments about who is paying more(which is really a non issue) is each individual’s deductions and use of loopholes varies according to how savvy you are. Like so many of these "articles" that discuss taxes they all totally ignore what is actually paid – because in the end they can’t take into consideration loopholes, exemptions, deductions, capital gains and shelters.

So when you hear that 40% pay no taxes don’t believe it, they pay more than you think just trying to exist.