- Apr 29, 2005
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I've been tortured to death by the red-herring that is "47% of Americans don't pay taxes!"
I'm trying to figure out why this bullshit is taking on a life of its own but then I remembered that the average IQ for an American is usually considered to be 100 (98 if you go by the "Wealth of Nations") and that (to paraphrase the late, great George Carlin), if that is the average, then half of the population is dumber than that!
Let's do something different and actually look at the facts.
If we took the bottom 50% of all wage earners according to their adjusted gross income (AGI) for the 2009 tax year (latest made available by the IRS), the bottom 50% of all AGI filers paid ~$19.5B on income of ~$1.06T or ~1.85% of their total AGI for the year. Pretty much nothing at all.
While it is true that they are paying nearly nothing, some are also earning nearly nothing as well. If you are on unemployment, you are required to file a tax return. If you are on Social Security and have any additional income from another retirement source, you have to file a tax return. If you were employed part time, you have to file a tax return. If you are a child and have earned more than $950 in a single year, you are required to file income taxes.
Now, when looking at the top 10% of AGI filers shows that they had income of ~$3.38T and paid ~$610B for a rate of ~18%.
The top 1% took in ~$1.235T in AGI and paid ~$318B in taxes for a rate of ~24%. Mitt must really, really have some good accountants if he's at 13%! Either that or some of the others actually believe in not trying to squeeze out every penny that they can at the expense of those that are enabling them to live the life of complete luxory.
Now, let's look at corporate income taxes for 2009:
The rate for companies with > $2.5B in total assets was ~20.5%. The rate for companies one rung lower on the ladder ($500M - $2.5B) was ~$28.6%. The next rung down on the ladder (250M - 500M) is ~30.2%.
Huh. That's wierd how the higher up you go, the less that you pay.
If the largest of the countries corporations were to pay even a flat 25% rate, the amount of additional tax revenue that would be generated would be another $28B. But when you also add in the tens of billions of dollars that were also refunded to these same large corporations, you can see that the number is likely to be closer to $50B.
Also remember that, within the tax code are additional billions of dollars in grants, credits and exemptions for these same corporations.
If you really want to end this red herring argument, completely redo corporate income tax policy and cut spending.
Numbers/data gathered from:
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0#table1
and
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09coccr.pdf
I'm trying to figure out why this bullshit is taking on a life of its own but then I remembered that the average IQ for an American is usually considered to be 100 (98 if you go by the "Wealth of Nations") and that (to paraphrase the late, great George Carlin), if that is the average, then half of the population is dumber than that!
Let's do something different and actually look at the facts.
If we took the bottom 50% of all wage earners according to their adjusted gross income (AGI) for the 2009 tax year (latest made available by the IRS), the bottom 50% of all AGI filers paid ~$19.5B on income of ~$1.06T or ~1.85% of their total AGI for the year. Pretty much nothing at all.
While it is true that they are paying nearly nothing, some are also earning nearly nothing as well. If you are on unemployment, you are required to file a tax return. If you are on Social Security and have any additional income from another retirement source, you have to file a tax return. If you were employed part time, you have to file a tax return. If you are a child and have earned more than $950 in a single year, you are required to file income taxes.
Now, when looking at the top 10% of AGI filers shows that they had income of ~$3.38T and paid ~$610B for a rate of ~18%.
The top 1% took in ~$1.235T in AGI and paid ~$318B in taxes for a rate of ~24%. Mitt must really, really have some good accountants if he's at 13%! Either that or some of the others actually believe in not trying to squeeze out every penny that they can at the expense of those that are enabling them to live the life of complete luxory.
Now, let's look at corporate income taxes for 2009:
The rate for companies with > $2.5B in total assets was ~20.5%. The rate for companies one rung lower on the ladder ($500M - $2.5B) was ~$28.6%. The next rung down on the ladder (250M - 500M) is ~30.2%.
Huh. That's wierd how the higher up you go, the less that you pay.
If the largest of the countries corporations were to pay even a flat 25% rate, the amount of additional tax revenue that would be generated would be another $28B. But when you also add in the tens of billions of dollars that were also refunded to these same large corporations, you can see that the number is likely to be closer to $50B.
Also remember that, within the tax code are additional billions of dollars in grants, credits and exemptions for these same corporations.
If you really want to end this red herring argument, completely redo corporate income tax policy and cut spending.
Numbers/data gathered from:
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0#table1
and
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09coccr.pdf