As if federal income tax were the only tax, subby.....*sigh*

/Farkin' idiots.

In other news middle class and poor people don't pay any inheritance or capital gains taxes.

Over 50 million Americans are too poor to pay income taxes?

Clearly we must rectify this unfairness by making the wealthy wealthier.

The best answer anyone can come up with is, "don't worry, there's plenty of other taxes they get to pay, over and over again, on the same income." That's just great.

I usually pay $0 at tax time. That's because I pay tens of thousands over the course of the year.

Then I see they extended the unemployment to 99 weeks. I am near the line of "just lay me off so I can quit doing 5 jobs since everyone else got laid off."

OK productivity has increased, but so has the hole in my stomach. It's getting to be not worth it.

I Said: We should raise taxes on the poor.

Sales tax FTW!

Someone on Facebook said that people who make under $40K do not pay taxes and use gov't. sponsored programs more than others. Well, my tax return begs to differ, and short of unemployment, I've never used any gov't social service programs. She's a friend of a friend... I truly would love to biatchslap her. Needless to say, she hasn't shown herself since she got a cyber beatdown.

EatHam: There is no magic briefcase one gets access to upon becoming rich which contains the special key code to enter to be exempt from paying taxes.

Actually, there is. It's called capital gains.

Or were you not aware that you pay a higher tax rate than most billionaires?

hillbillypharmacist: The only truly fair tax is a capitation tax. If you exist, you cut a check for $8500 a year to the government. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Pay for your goddam selves, you bunch of poor liberal thieves.

It ain't about being fair. It's about keeping an economy generating wealth and keeping society stable. Flat taxes (and single rate like you trollingly propose) tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, leading to mass poverty and economic collapse.....and eventually, those few get their heads lopped off when the starving populace get tired of being hungry.

What works is a robust middle class buying goods and directly creating jobs. You know -- money _moving_, not stagnating in some derivatives-based investment fund. In order to sustain that robust middle class, you need progressive taxation.

There's also the matter of relative wealth -- money is a quite slippery thing when it comes to comparing wealth to wealth. Counterintuitively, the wealthy bloke in a society with aggressively progressive tax structure may be more wealthy in concrete terms of buying power than the fellow in a flat-tax society, even though the latter is sitting on more money -- the former loses a higher percentage of earnings, but what remains, because of the non-stagnant economy, can do more with what he has left. Healthy middle class = more consumer goods cheaper due to economies of scale = more buying power per dollar, and that higher buying power can more than offset the losses due to higher taxes in the progressive society. I'd rather have 1.5 million dollars in a society where a nice car, say, costs $100k because there's enough demand to mass produce them than have $2 million in a society where that same car costs $300k because there's only a handful of people wealthy enough to buy one and each one has to be hand built....

hillbillypharmacist: The only truly fair tax is a capitation tax. If you exist, you cut a check for $8500 a year to the government. No ifs, ands, or buts.

I wonder what the average sales tax burden (dollar amount) is per year. I googled a bit but only found percentages.

Yeah, I paid zilch in income tax ('cept for what my employer pays, Medicare, SS, etc), and got back a huge check. My total intake last year was, what, hmm... about $33-34k.

But then I paid $11,000 in tuition, and then books, and then I pay $420 a month for health insurance for my daughter and I... and ever damn other dime went somewhere- groceries, utilities, etc, etc. I would rather be making enough I'd have to pay some income tax. That'll come after I'm done with school. Hopefully, the income taxes I pay in the future will help some other poor single-dad, starving college student schmuck.

EatHam:
Were you not aware that the cap gains rate is not zero?

It's 15%. You said there was no magic rich people have that allow them to pay less in taxes. There most certainly is. That's far from the only one. Have them pay the same rate on their capital gains income as everyone else does on their hard-earned income, and we can cut taxes for everyone with the extra revenue.

cK-MidnightFreak: ne2d:
I wonder what the average sales tax burden (dollar amount) is per year. I googled a bit but only found percentages.

You would need to back out the 36% of people who do not pay at all to find a realistic figure for what people who pay taxes actually fork over.

No. Not paying income tax does not mean not paying any tax. That's my whole point.

A family of four earning more than $50,000 can have no income tax liability after taking the standard deduction and the child tax credit.

What a bunch of slackers leeching off the government tit

We should keep the capital gains tax artificially low while dropping the top marginal tax rates another 3-5% while raising the bottom 3 marginal tax rates because those bastards aren't paying their fair share.

Some of the comments in that link are freaking brilliant

submitter, is this you?

How about removing voting franchises from all who do not pay taxes? seems only fair - no skin in the game - no vote. It think this might be applicable at all levels of government.
Posted by: Garrett | Mar 11, 2010 2:26:13 PM

??

If so, you're a damn fool.