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But not everyone who thinks that what is going on is on board with "kill the rich and take all their money".

Nobody said they did. It's called "reductio ad absurdum." Take an argument to an extreme to show why it is absurd.

People DO say: "the rich should pay more" when they talk about solving government financial problems. That argument is false, because EVEN IF you took ALL the money from the rich (taxed at 100% of income and wealth), and then removed them from the welfare roles as a new cost by killing them, you couldn't solve the government financial problems. That means there has to be a different answer, if there is one. See how that works?

And, right now, they are forcing this, not from a "this is unfair to us", but from a "I want to keep more, the rest of you have no say" basis.

And the ones who want to tax them more are doing so from a "this is unfair" basis, as well. "They should pay their fair share..." Well, "fair" is such a wonderful subjective term, isn't it? You think it is fair if they pay 60% of their income, perhaps. I think it is fair if they pay 35% -- because 35% of A LOT is much more than 35% of what I pay on. They're already paying a large percentage of the total tax bill. I think that's fair. YMMV.

Our government is supposed to be "of/by/for *the people*". Not "of/by/for *the wealthy*"..

When you realize that an almost majority of the people pay no income tax at all, ...

They should have the same rights/say/power as anyone else.

Then tax them at the same rate as everyone else. This shows data for 2016. The top 1% had 22% of the income and paid 34% of their income in taxes. The average tax as percentage of income for all was 31%. That looks like it's about the same rate, within some margin of error. Isn't that fair? Remember before you say "no", that 34% of $1.7 million (the average income of the top 1%) is a lot more than 31% of $81,000 (the average income of the 60th through 80th percentile of taxpayers.) And consider that the top 1% already pays almost a full quarter of all taxes.

Taxes on Income (which the Really Rich do not pay) are not.

The statistics for tax payments show that the top one percent pays 24% of the federal, state, and local taxes which averages out to be 34% of their income, while the bottom 20% pays only 2% of the taxes using 19% of their income. In all metrics, "Really Rich" certainly do pay taxes.

The really rich only pay taxes on Realized gains, not on the value of the increase in the assets

They pay capital gains when the gain is realized, not when it appears "on the books" as a paper tiger. The poor also pay capital gains at the same time.

and even then are discounted heavily (as capital gains)

Social engineering, to promote investment. Investment is money that other people get to use while the "Really Rich" don't have access to it. And it's not just "Really Rich" who have stocks, etc. Those are parts of many many working people's retirement accounts. I have a retirement plan that consists mostly of stock and bond funds and I pay nothing at all in taxes on gains until I start accessing the money. Nor do I get to write off any losses. If you want to tax people on the paper profits for stocks and bonds at the time the paper profits are made, you are going to be hurting a very very large number of people who are not even close to the "Really Rich" that you don't like.

Hell, some places even tax the Electricity being produced by your solar panels, that never leaves your property.

Fascinating. What I've found by searching for this tax is that it is a personal property tax on the generation equipment, not a tax on the electricity it produces. This is like the personal property taxes on Rich People stuff that the poor people don't ever pay. The government cannot tax the actual electricity unless it is sold, at which point it has "left the property".

There are also some pretty high exemptions, like a lower cutoff of 1MW systems for solar. It is trivial to avoid those taxes.

Adding it all together, US is still third from the bottom

http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2013...

Except due to loopholes, corporations pay far less. And I quote from Citizens For Tax Justice (and I've seen far less flattering numbers, like most companies pay 5% or less, but they probably included unprofitable ones that don't pay any taxes - this study only included profitable companies).

While the federal corporate tax law ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate
income tax rate, the 288 corporations in our study on average paid barely more than half that amount:
19.4 percent over the 2008-12 period. Many companies paid far less, including 26 that paid nothing at all
over the entire five-year period. "

Solar is one of most subsidized industries.

Yeah, a citation's definitely gonna be needed for that one.

Agricultural subsidies are around $20 billion every year. Fortune 500 companies totalled $63 billion in subsidies (top 100 here, no solar to be found) of which a single company (Boeing) totalled $13 billion ($8.7B in a single deal), while the automobile industry (including Ford and GM, but also Fiat, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen) got over $12 billion. AT&T and Verizon together collected $26 billion in tax breaks between 2008-2010, while Exxon Mobil got another $4B. Fossil fuel industries have received over $500 billion dollars in tax breaks and direct incentives, 70% of all energy subsidies over the last 60 years, while wind and solar got just 9%.

So tell me again how Solyndra's $0.5B in loan guarantees are so "titanic".

Arguably, social security @ 15% and Medicare, most states add in sales taxes @ 6%, local property taxes, fuel taxes; no 60% isn't that far fetched.

This is fantasy math. The 15% (roughly) payroll tax drops to zero on income above $113,000. If you are making so much that your effective Federal tax rate is close to 43% (only levied on income above $250,000) then your payroll tax percentage is very small. And sales tax is only levied on taxable purchases - a rich person uses little of their income in this way (mostly this money is 'invested'), unlike poor people where it is a large share. So, yes, 60% is extremely far fetched.

The actual overall tax burden of the rich is only about 33.0%, not much more than the average tax burden for Americans of 30.1%. The effective U.S. tax system overall is already nearly flat, with the income tax the only prgressive component to offset extremely regressive taxes (e.g. payroll and sales).

Citation please?

This article shows that they make, as an average, 20% of the income and pay 20% of the taxes, http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2...

of course that is generally speaking, not specifically speaking. Meaning that those who dodge the taxes in this way are paying lower than that, making them freeloading scum, while the part of the group paying more are making up for their freeloading.

Oh, and, of course, any profits here get taxed by the federal government as well.

Hahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! What a maroon. What an ignaramous!

Boeing doesn't pay taxes. They get a tax return. Fuck Boeing and their entire supply chain. Fuck them in the ass with a cactus.

Well, that's nothing like how income taxes work in the USA. Besides having the first $X not be taxed, we have the most heavily "progressive" and most unproportional taxation in the world.

Perhaps by "progressive" you meant "regressive"? If not... that's rubbish on all counts and you should know better. Payroll, sales, and other taxes are highly regressive and primarily affect low income workers. On the surface, the US's income taxes appear somewhat progressive, but the myriad deductions and loopholes can have a dramatic effect. I have seen plenty of people with $90-100k in income paying $3k/year in taxes through entirely legal means.

Effective tax burden in the US is nearly flat, particularly if you ignore outliers (essentially the top and bottom .1%).

The typical American gets more out of SS and Medicare than they put in. Single men who don't pay an average of about $2000 a year in income tax are freeloaders at the federal level. So are single women who pay less than about $5000/yr and married couples who pay less than about $7500/yr. Take a look here for the info - that's the Urban Institute, not the Tea Party.

Next, the famously conservative Ezra Klein points out that the median taxpayer pays 13.9% of their income in federal tax and 11.3% in state and local. That's sourced here, where they point out this person makes about $42k/year. Now, since payroll taxes at the time the article talks about were 4.2% to SS and 1.45% to Medicare (from the employee's perspective), that means that they're paying 5.65% of their income as payroll tax, so the median taxpayer here is paying 8.25% of their income as federal income tax, meaning: $3465. This is muddied significantly by the fact that these figures represent all returns, not all individuals, so married couples' returns are mixed in with single people's returns, but since over half of people are women and quite a lot of those who aren't are married, it's pretty clear that a majority of people are getting a great deal from the federal tax system regardless of how they vote. Just because states don't hand out nearly as much free money (they can't print it) doesn't change that.

It's unfortunate that the "they-pay-nothing" argument is made by so many, including a presidential candidate. This statement is false.

Even the bottom 20% pays an average of 17.4% of their income in taxes. It is absurd for anyone to say that some group "pays nothing." It is grossly absurd for a well-educated, former governor and many supposedly informed supporters, including a member of the House Budget Committee, to say "they don't pay anything."

Here is one summary of the overall tax burden as a % of income in 2011:
17.4% - Lowest 20% (Avg cash income: $13,000)
21.2% - Second 20% ($26,100)
25.2% - Third 20% ($42,000)
28.3% - Fourth 20% ($68,700)
29.5% - Next 10% ($105,000)
20.3% - Next 5% ($147,000)
30.4% - Next 4% ($254,000)
29.0% - Top 1% ($1,371,000)

Source (pdf): http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/02/press_release_general_electric.php

General Electric's (GE) annual SEC 10-K filing for 2011 (filed February 24, 2012) reveals that the company paid at most two percent of its $80.2 billion in U.S. pretax profits in federal income taxes over the last 10 years.

Following revelations in March 2011 that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010 and in fact enjoyed $3.3 billion in net tax benefits, GE told AFP (3/29/2011), "GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because we did not owe any." But don't worry, GE told Dow Jones Newswires (3/28/2011), "our 2011 tax rate is slated to return to more normal levels with GE Capital's recovery."

As it turns out, however, in 2011 GE's effective federal income tax rate was only 11.3 percent, less than a third the official 35 percent corporate tax rate.

"I don't think most Americans would consider 11.3 percent, not to mention GE's long-term effective rate of 1.8 percent, to be 'normal,' " said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. "But for GE, taxes are something to be avoided rather than paid."

Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.

GE is one of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies profiled in "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010." The report shows GE is one of 30 major U.S. corporations that paid zero -- or less -- in federal income taxes in the last three years. The full report, a joint project of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, is at http://ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/.

The difference between the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes and GE, is that GE makes billions of dollars per year.

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/02/press_release_general_electric.php

General Electric's (GE) annual SEC 10-K filing for 2011 (filed February 24, 2012) reveals that the company paid at most two percent of its $80.2 billion in U.S. pretax profits in federal income taxes over the last 10 years.

Following revelations in March 2011 that GE paid no federal income taxes in 2010 and in fact enjoyed $3.3 billion in net tax benefits, GE told AFP (3/29/2011), "GE did not pay US federal taxes last year because we did not owe any." But don't worry, GE told Dow Jones Newswires (3/28/2011), "our 2011 tax rate is slated to return to more normal levels with GE Capital's recovery."

As it turns out, however, in 2011 GE's effective federal income tax rate was only 11.3 percent, less than a third the official 35 percent corporate tax rate.

"I don't think most Americans would consider 11.3 percent, not to mention GE's long-term effective rate of 1.8 percent, to be 'normal,' " said Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. "But for GE, taxes are something to be avoided rather than paid."

Pretty sure it's the same with the other companies, but you can research it yourself.

GE is one of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies profiled in "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010." The report shows GE is one of 30 major U.S. corporations that paid zero -- or less -- in federal income taxes in the last three years. The full report, a joint project of Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, is at http://ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/.

The difference between the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes and GE, is that GE makes billions of dollars per year.

First, the political damage is not that huge. Second, it's very likely that Romney has paid little income tax, though quite large amounts of other taxes...

Interesting. Normally right-wingers do not acknowledge the existence of taxes other than income taxes (virtually the only progressive tax it in the combined American local, state, and federal government revenue systems) since they are constantly decrying that 46% of Americans "do not pay taxes", ignoring the highly regressive FICA, sales taxes, etc. that cause the total tax rate of the bulk of the middle class (not just the marginal rate) to be nearly as high as that of the top 1%: http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf . In fact once you get into to the top 1% your overall tax rate is lower than the brakcets just below you, and the higher you go (0.1%, 0.01%, etc.) the lower it drops.

Obviously you can't see the difference between making a deal that allows you to leverage somebody else's labor to earn profit and an unfair deal. I outright stated that sometimes this is fair. Why are you complaining about that? Methinks you are a troll.

Yes, the USA has one graduated tax, and it has hundreds of regressive taxes. When you add them all up as this source did and that you refuse to acknowledge -- neocons are really good at that -- it comes out remarkably close to even across all levels of income.

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2012/04/who_pays_taxes_in_america.php

Obviously you can't see the difference between making a deal that allows you to leverage somebody else's labor to earn profit and an unfair deal. I outright stated that sometimes this is fair. Why are you complaining about that? Methinks you are a troll.

Yes, the USA has one graduated tax, and it has hundreds of regressive taxes. When you add them all up as this source did and that you refuse to acknowledge -- neocons are really good at that -- it comes out remarkably close to even across all levels of income.

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2012/04/who_pays_taxes_in_america.php

But you can't become rich only because of your own hard work. You also have to take advantage of the hard work of others, pay them less than the value of their labor so you can skim off a portion of that value for yourself.

I'm shure you know this by your experience in trying to be rich. So, what you say is there is no way a company will pay fair salaries AND be profitable. I don't really know what else to say to you, we don't live on the same universe.

Don't put YOUR words in my mouth. That may be acceptable in YOUR universe but it's not in mine. I never said a company can't pay fair salaries and be profitable. I said you can't get rich unless you pay people less then the value of their work. If that's not obvious to you, let me illustrate: If I own a ShavanoMart and I employ you, you contribute X dollars to my bottom line. If I pay you X dollars, I'd be just as well off if I didn't employ you at all. The agreement you and I make about your wages and working conditions may or may not be fair. (It's fair if you are free to not accept my offer but do it anyway.) If you're not free to reject my offer, I can get you to work at an exploitative wage.

And that person, whether honest or dishonest, gets benefit from the government in proportion to the size of his operations.

As everyone else. Why should A pay, lets say, 20% of their income, and B pay 40%?

That doesn't happen in America Here, almost everybody pays close to the same fraction of their income in taxes. The top 10% pay about 48% of the total taxes and they get about 45% of total income. To me, that seems pretty fair.

source: http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2012/04/who_pays_taxes_in_america.php

But you can't become rich only because of your own hard work. You also have to take advantage of the hard work of others, pay them less than the value of their labor so you can skim off a portion of that value for yourself.

I'm shure you know this by your experience in trying to be rich. So, what you say is there is no way a company will pay fair salaries AND be profitable. I don't really know what else to say to you, we don't live on the same universe.

Don't put YOUR words in my mouth. That may be acceptable in YOUR universe but it's not in mine. I never said a company can't pay fair salaries and be profitable. I said you can't get rich unless you pay people less then the value of their work. If that's not obvious to you, let me illustrate: If I own a ShavanoMart and I employ you, you contribute X dollars to my bottom line. If I pay you X dollars, I'd be just as well off if I didn't employ you at all. The agreement you and I make about your wages and working conditions may or may not be fair. (It's fair if you are free to not accept my offer but do it anyway.) If you're not free to reject my offer, I can get you to work at an exploitative wage.

And that person, whether honest or dishonest, gets benefit from the government in proportion to the size of his operations.

As everyone else. Why should A pay, lets say, 20% of their income, and B pay 40%?

That doesn't happen in America Here, almost everybody pays close to the same fraction of their income in taxes. The top 10% pay about 48% of the total taxes and they get about 45% of total income. To me, that seems pretty fair.

source: http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2012/04/who_pays_taxes_in_america.php

about 10% tax? sounds a little high

Sounds very high.

30 of 280 Fortune 500 companies paid no federal tax in 2008-10; 26 of those paid no federal tax in 2008-11; 24 paid less than 4% federal tax in 2011 alone; 15 paid 0% or less

Apple doesn't even make the list...

Meanwhile,
http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm
top 1% Average income $1,495,000 per year

From that link, $518,000 a year gets you into the 1% club. From there, you have to claw your way into the 0.5% club that starts at $1.5M. It doesn't materially affect your arguement though.

For me, I really don't care about the magic "1%" number. I care about having enough money to do what I want, and saving for 30-40 years will get me there.

BTW, thanks for the link. I'd always had questions about the statistics of "what it means to be in the 1%". Like, "is that number average or median?", etc. This answers some of those questions.

Not really...

In fact, if you saved $3,000 each and every month for 20 years and got an annual 4.75% tax free or after tax return, you'd end up with 1,165,520 dollars

This will produce between 30,000 (low risk) and 60,000 (high risk) and 80,000+ (very high risk).

Meanwhile,
http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm
top 1% Average income $1,495,000 per year

I.e., they earn more in ONE year than you can save in 20 years with a good return in the stock market on a professional salary.

20 years of savings(with good returns) will currently produce about 2% to 6% of what they make each year.

This wasn't true in the 1970's. The difference between the top 1% and the rest of society was much less extreme back then. It started under Reagan (who I voted for) as the top 1% benefited out of proportion from the tax cuts. Their total tax rate has dropped from 28% to 18%. The total tax rate on the middle class is higher (about 28%).

Total tax rate includes both federal income taxes plus fixed federal, state, and local taxes (sales tax, gasoline tax, cell phone tax, property tax, etc.). The fixed taxes comprise over 20% of the bottom quintiles earnings, 15% of the middle quintiles earnings, and under .5% of the top 1%'s earnings.

Based solely on the published income tax brackets, Americans have the mistaken impression that their overall tax system is progressive. This isn't true. An example of this thinking is illustrated by the parent comment:

Point 1: "the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars...", this is generally true.
Point 2: "...as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N", this is baloney.

In fact, there are a number of flat and regressive taxes in the US, such that each quintile of tax payers pays taxes roughly in proportion to their income, as noted by the Citizens For Tax Justice report: America's Tax System Is Not As Progressive As You Think .

Way to keep hawking that meme, Baloroth!

The methodology used to come up with that 35% figure counts only the FEDERAL INCOME TAX, leaving out sales taxes, licenses, payroll taxes, local income taxes, state income taxes, property taxes, fees, tolls, energy taxes, etc... According to Citizens for Tax Justice, ( http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2009.pdf), when you take all of these taxes and fees into account, that 1% pays 23% of ALL taxes on 22.2% of ALL income -- not exactly representative of a progressive tax system.

In addition, that same 1% controls 40% of the wealth in this country, which they supplement by raking in that 22.2% of income, along with returns on the investment of that wealth, which are taxed at a far lower rate. And don't get me started on carried interest!

Now, we can argue about whether or not the tax system is fair, or working to advance the goals which we agree on. But to continue to trot out the trope that the poor wealthy are overburdened compared to the moochers at the bottom serves only to muddy the waters of any attempt at a rational discussion.

With nearly 50% of the US paying no federal income tax, they have no problem asking for "more". Want to be 'fair'? Get rid of the EIC -- or at least prevent it from giving back MORE money that was originally paid by the recipient.

Now that's what I call class warfare. And so unlike raising taxes on people who can afford them, it is indeed rotten economics.

Have you looked at the actual table? For a single person, the Earned Income Tax Credit isn't available if (s)he earns more than $13,460. That's comparable to the US Census Poverty Threshold of $11,344 (for a person younger than 65). If not for the Earned Income Tax Credit, people who have an income might actually starve, go homeless, etc. So when I say this is class warfare, it is only because it could actually kill the working poor.

In contrast, the wealthy really can afford it without noticing. There was an interesting New York Times article on this recently, which linked to this Citizens for Tax Justice fact sheet. If you read through it, you'll see that the revenue from increasing the tax rate on the top 1% by income would be similar to that of raising it on the bottom 60% by the same percentage. I assure you, there will be enough left over to provide basic necessities of life! (In fact, I'm not in the top 1%, but I certainly could pay more taxes without great hardship. It might mean it'd take me longer to afford a house, but I'm not exactly homeless in my 2-bedroom rented townhouse.)

If you're not swayed by arguments such as "don't kill people with taxes", then consider no taxes on poor people an investment. If they have all of a home, healthy food on the table, adequate medical care, a quality education, and available jobs, it's reasonable to believe that many of them will go on to become middle-class tax-payers: enough so to pay back your investment with far more than the nominal 1% tax rate you're suggesting. In fact, by effectively selling too soon, you're virtually guaranteeing you'll throw away what you put in with that government-provided K12 education and the like.

I'm saddened by the fact that society has somehow gotten to the point where the "logic" of "he has more so we can steal it from him!" some how is both morally and ethically justifiable. Hell, why stop at 50%? By your so called logic we surely can justify taking 95% of what they earn. They can afford it, right?

I believe the idea was at least to take away with is basically wealth redistribution at gun point. EIC is basically that. Take from everyone else, at gunpoint by way of threat of jail, and give it to someone else. Apparently if you do that as an individual, armed robbery, it is viewed as morally wrong. If you do it with the power of government then suddenly what was wrong is now right. How exactly can it be right for "all of us", in the form of the government, to forcibly take money from one party and give it to another when it would be wrong for any individual in that group to do so? How does the super class of "government" gain powers that the individual does not have?

With nearly 50% of the US paying no federal income tax, they have no problem asking for "more". Want to be 'fair'? Get rid of the EIC -- or at least prevent it from giving back MORE money that was originally paid by the recipient.

Now that's what I call class warfare. And so unlike raising taxes on people who can afford them, it is indeed rotten economics.

Have you looked at the actual table? For a single person, the Earned Income Tax Credit isn't available if (s)he earns more than $13,460. That's comparable to the US Census Poverty Threshold of $11,344 (for a person younger than 65). If not for the Earned Income Tax Credit, people who have an income might actually starve, go homeless, etc. So when I say this is class warfare, it is only because it could actually kill the working poor.

In contrast, the wealthy really can afford it without noticing. There was an interesting New York Times article on this recently, which linked to this Citizens for Tax Justice fact sheet. If you read through it, you'll see that the revenue from increasing the tax rate on the top 1% by income would be similar to that of raising it on the bottom 60% by the same percentage. I assure you, there will be enough left over to provide basic necessities of life! (In fact, I'm not in the top 1%, but I certainly could pay more taxes without great hardship. It might mean it'd take me longer to afford a house, but I'm not exactly homeless in my 2-bedroom rented townhouse.)

If you're not swayed by arguments such as "don't kill people with taxes", then consider no taxes on poor people an investment. If they have all of a home, healthy food on the table, adequate medical care, a quality education, and available jobs, it's reasonable to believe that many of them will go on to become middle-class tax-payers: enough so to pay back your investment with far more than the nominal 1% tax rate you're suggesting. In fact, by effectively selling too soon, you're virtually guaranteeing you'll throw away what you put in with that government-provided K12 education and the like.

Yes, I'm so glad all those wealth-holders are paying their taxes!

Nice claim, seems like I read that before. I will draw on sources that I can find on the internet, rather than what's in my library because my library is harder to share with you, of course you'll just refute these anyway, but it's a good exercise for me:

Here is one that gives the tax rate for the oil industry as of 1998.
Here is one that demonstrates the House wanting to end the tax breaks that you claim don't exist. Of course with the political state of affairs here I wouldn't put it past congress to waste time with useless regulation, but that is another discussion.
Here is one analyzing the oil industries tax breaks as compared to ethanol. Note that I am not a proponent of ethanol and that this information is solely to demonstrate the tax breaks given to oil companies.
Here is a bill from 2005 doing more of the same.
Enjoy.

100 billion ? That's peanuts compared to recent tax cuts, see http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm

Stephan

You make a number of assertions, but you don't even attempt to back any of them up. The current tax structure is regressive, that is, the percentage of income you pay in taxes increases as your income increases. A flat tax would simply "flatten" that structure. This will absolutely force the lower income taxpayers to pay more in taxes if it is to remain revenue neutral.

A not-very-well advertised part of all of the flat tax schemes that I have seen is that they are NOT revenue neutral. They are all accompanied by spending cuts. This, of course, hurts those who rely more on public services as well as increasing their taxes. (Can you afford to send kids to private school?) http://www.ctj.org/html/armchr.htm http://www.wordwiz72.com/flattax.html

Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. In fact, Microsoft actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits.

General Electric, America's most profitable corporation, reported $50.8 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, but paid only 11.5 percent of that in federal income taxes. That low tax rate reflected almost $12 billion in corporate tax welfare for GE.

IBM reported $5.7 billion in U.S. profits in 2000, but paid only 3.4 percent of that in federal income taxes. In 1997, IBM reported $3.1 billion in U.S. profits, and instead of paying taxes, got an outright tax rebate. Over the past five years, IBM enjoyed a total of $4.7 billion in corporate tax welfare.

In the US, corporate taxes (state + federal) are about 40%! 40%!
Maybe you meant 4%, not 40%?

even more...
If big corporations actually paid 35 percent of their U.S. profits in federal income taxes, as the tax code ostensibly requires, corporate income taxes this year would total at least $308 billion. But actual corporate-tax payments this year are expected to be only $136 billion. In other words, this year (and next), for the first time since the early 1980S, corporate-tax loopholes will actually cost the U.S. Treasury more than the amount companies pay in income taxes.

Check out for more examples.

How about this?

The more you learn!

"Altruism was rarely the motivating factor in establishing the large independent foundations - ones like Pew, Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson that every NPR listener can name. The Ford Foundation was established to help keep the company in the family without paying estate taxes. John D. MacArthur, founder of Bankers Life and Casualty Company, never made any significant charitable contributions during his lifetime, but left his estate of nearly $1 billion to a foundation rather than to his estranged children. One of the trusts founded by the Sun Oil heirs, the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, was established to "acquaint the American people with the evils of bureaucracy... and with the values of a free market...to point out the false promises of Socialism...." In one cozy office the staff of the Pew Charitable Trusts now give out $21 million a year of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust both to right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and the National Right to Work gang - and to crunchy groups like the Tides Foundation and the Pesticide Action Network, under terms of a different Pew heir's will."

Maybe you could peek at the methodology and see if you disagree with it.

Which relates to any tax on internet sales. Guess who uses the internet a lot? That's right... I'm not sure why poor people should have to pay more in taxes to make up for middle class and rich people buying over the internet and decreasing revenue.

Which relates to any tax on internet sales. Guess who uses the internet a lot? That's right... I'm not sure why poor people should have to pay more in taxes to make up for middle class and rich people buying over the internet and decreasing revenue.

I think corporation pay a lot less tax than you think. Take a look at this old report.

Isn't this a lot like retrofitting a rusted, worn-out '89 Ford Escort with front and side airbags, chrome wheels, and Corinthian leather seat covers? Pimp My Ride is fine for MTV but should not be practiced as US space policy. The Shuttle has had its day. Stop sinking so many dollars into this antiquated, fragile, expensive money pit and design and build a space transportation system that belongs to this century, not the last.

Exactly. Much of what's going on now in the space program is said ride-pimping and self-maintenance (horrendously underfunded self-maintenance at that) Combine space travel with tax cuts and you'll see one of them just must go without perfect national conditions. Instead the U.S., like Microsoft, has lots of enemies worldwide, lots of security holes, and are now trying to create "rescues" like these for problems they helped make, by making strides sans foresight.

Unlike MS, the US has dug themselves in a budget hole, so it'll be tough to settle any of these trials/tribulations.

What company pays negative tax rates? Do you have a link for that (that isn't mother jones or IWW or some other nonsense)?

Obviously the previous poster didn't mean negative tax rates. What was meant was some companies have received more in subsidies than they pay in taxes. Due to all it's fancy accounting tricks. Enron pulled this neat trick off in 4 of the 5 years from 1996-2000. Here is a link.

Of course, considering your slap at any information provided by Mother Jones, IWW, or such "nonsense", you'll probably consider the previous link "nonsense", too.

If you fix senior management's compensation and do not tie it to the financial performance of the company in some way, what type of management do you think you'll get? A style that is focused on increasing shareholder value?

I know this flies in the face of conservative orthodoxy, but "increasing shareholder value" is not the only reponsibility corporations have, though they desperately want it to be. By living in my community, I derive benefits from that community, and the community should expect that I give back to the community to a certain degree. The same logic must hold true for corporations. If it doesn't, you are giving the corporation free rein to move into a community (receiving property tax abatements), drive local competitors out of business, pollute the environoment, overwork the workers while driving down wages, and then, when more profits can be made elsewhere, close shop and leave, taking all the money with it.

Is this the kind of neighbor you want?

Finding somebody who wants to be a senior VP isn't difficult, finding somebody who is good at is, that's why the salaries for those positions are so inflated.

The salaries are so inflated mainly for three reasons:

1. There's a artificial limit on the supply. Unless you have an MBA from the "right" school and friends in the "right" places, you need not apply.
2. The boards of directors of compaines (which set executive salaries) are one big clique. Look at the median salary (exec salaries are public knowledge) for the position, and say, "Our guys are better than average!" So they raise the salary of the VP to be above the median, which raises the median. Next board comes along and does the same thing. And so on. And so on.
3. It is a difficult job, and many who try fail. But those that fail can usually rely on friends to find them enough work so that they will be properly, financially taken care of.

What a fucking baby. You are completely clueless if all you have to say about Bush is that you are irked about the Patriot Act.

How about making us less safe?
How about repealing environmental laws that protect all of us?
How about blurring the line between church and state?
What about lying about Iraq?
What about giving a huge tax break to the richest americans?
There are so many other things.

If all you can do is whine about being bothered by ads... fuck! You deserve the miserable piece of shit this country will become if we continue to have leaders like GWB.

Sometimes you need to vote against someone. Stop obsessing on Kerry and obsess on Bush.

What Kerry says, essentially, is "I AM GOING TO TAX THE AMERICAN COMPANIES SO THAT THEY CAN'T OPERATE AT A PROFIT ANYMORE, SO THAT THE JAPS WILL WIN THE COMPETITION !"

You mean he might actually get them to pay some taxes? 82 Big U.S. Corporations Paid No Tax in One or More Bush Years.

John Kerry would have

John Kerry has explained his position on this, and it does involve a subtlety, but it is completely valid. He voted to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq. He did not vote to send troops into Iraq. The difference is significant, because the authority to use the military gives the president leverage in negotiations, in this case, in convincing Saddam to allow the inspectors unfettered access to whatever they needed. Prior to the passage of that resolution, Bush said war would be used as a last resort, only when absolutely necessary. We now know this was not true. Please note I am not giving Kerry a pass on this vote; if he trusted that this president would keep his word, he was a fool, and if voted because he was afraid for his political career, then he was a coward.

The top 25% of taxpayers pay 83% of the taxes

Look at you own numbers. The top 25% includes people making just over $56,000 a year. Let's talk instead about the top 1% of the population. By 2010, this bracket, which pays 34% of the taxes (your number), will have received over 50% of the tax cut, while the next 19%, which pays ~45% of the taxes (the brackets between the charts don't line up perfectly) only gets 18% of the tax cut. Granted, these numbers are from a group against the tax cuts, but its hard to find numbers from pro-tax cut organizations. If you have any opposing numbers, I would love to see them, but in the meantime the data tells me the rich are getting one hell of a deal.

Name five you've lost.

Other posters have covered this. Apparently I don't have the right to be in the president's line of sight unless I support him (or least don't overtly oppose him.)

Coalition to fight in Iraq included more countries this time than in '91.

This is a great argument, because it's a number that can be easily verified, and because it involves a bash on France. It's completely insignificant, though. The lack of support manifests itself not in how many countries decided to provide some token of material support, but in how unpopular that material support was in so many of those countries, and in all the others. We have the biggest, baddest military on the planet, and as such material support is only gravy compared to the respect and admiration of people around the globe. Without the latter, we fall to pieces when China, the EU, and India wake up and realize they don't need us anymore.

Again, name five [about women's rights]

I'll name some social issues in general, though not all are women's rights. Bush wants to remove a woman's right to decide with her doctor the best course of action for her own health. I'm not just talking about abortion, either. One of the methods by which this administration is trying to achieve the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade is to begin recognizing a fetus as having rights under the law. A nice side effect is that a woman, under some proposed manifestations of this strategy, may not have the right to get certain medical care if it poses even a remote threat to her pregnancy. Bush is in favor of an amendment to the Constitution that imposes a particular religious view's concept of a proper marriage on the entire citizenry of the United States. Bush has given the public schools an unfunded mandate and brought the federal government's involvement in local schools to unprecedented levels (great move for a party whose platform used to include the dismantlement of the DOE). Bush has fostered a political environment that brands dissenters as Unamerican, as if the conservative right has a monopoly on patriotism... there are more, but this is getting long.

how many of the past presidents were in the midst of a recession when a major act of terrorism struck?

Not too many. You're right, he's gotten way too much flack for the economy. By the same token, he can't take nearly as much credit as he claims for the subsequent recovery.

Which really means that the actual cost of this professional expense deduction is:

• 2/3 you
• 1/3 govt
• 0/3 your employer

False. That chart takes all of those into account - this chart breaks it all down by source, and you can add it up for yourself.

Then on top of that we have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for health care.

That's not a tax, since you're not paying the government for it, and therefore it doesn't add to your total tax burden.

I bet if you factor in the cost of health care for a family of four along with the cost of a college education for two children we as Americans come out behind.

Well, sure, if you define things that aren't taxes to be taxes, you're going to "discover" all sorts of ways you're getting "screwed". Of course, you can define the moon to be made of green cheese if you like, but that doesn't actually make it so.

So tell me, once again, how we're better off here?

If that's the argument you wanted to make, you should have made that argument. As it is, you started off with the claim that taxation in the US was roughly the same as taxation elsewhere, which is provably false.

You lose.

If your deductions outnumber your profits... you don't pay taxes, but you're also losing money as a business.

Perhaps you should explain this to Microsoft, GM, GE, and others...

"Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. In fact, Microsoft actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits."

Using Open Source/Free Software would not take Microsoft money out of the system; instead the same money could be spent on hardware, training, better support.

If you are talking about the US, of course IBM, Redhat and Novell are all American companies, and they *do* pay tax.

Before tax credits for using U.S. workers, we need to close the tax loopholes for multinational corporations that are encouraging them to offshore work. Profits earned overseas are taxed if invested back in the U.S., but they are tax-free if invested back overseas. There is a U.S. Senate bill offering amnesty for these overseas profits. This is one of many examples of American workers getting outmaneuvered and not even knowing it.

a Swede earns between 25 and 45 percent of the salary of an American

Well, studio appartments in San Jose, CA are running $800-900 and in Pittsburgh, PA they're $600-700, versus Sweden at about $300, so if rents are any guide then purchasing power is at rough parity. Food costs about the same in both places, but no charge for healthcare, education,daycare, etc. in Sweden, so it's a wash.

the top one percent of Americans pay 36% of all income taxes -- and this is the system you describe as `regressive'

First of all, that factoid is misleading when you consider the proportion of income paid in relation to the other tax brackets -- you are ignoring sales and property taxes, for one thing. In relation to all the other countries, it is regressive because the amounts involved are tiny.

it's clear that you're not on the popular side of the upcoming election.

Please keep telling me that because I hope it will make me work harder. As for the correctness of the position, I hope we can discuss that in another part of this thread.

We're awfully close to having half of the population being able to soak the other half of the population...a Bad Thing for the continued health of our nation.

On the contrary! Take a look at Scandinavian income taxes. In Sweden for example, they have two tax brackets, 0% and 57% -- the top bracket begins at 10% above the mean wage. Therefore, most Swedes pay no income tax; less than half pay all. Do you think Sweden isn't healthy? They have 3.5 more years of life expectancy than we do, the longest in the world. The also have the lowest infant mortality in the world. Their poverty rate is 0.2%, so low that the CIA reports it as "NA%". They have low (2.2%) inflation and (4%) unemployment, and national debt. Their GDP growth and spending power denominated by cost of living is on par with that of the U.S. They lead Europe in literacy and access to health care. They provide their citizens and immigrants with free education through four years of college. They have less than 1% unmet demand for daycare. They have a vibrant economy at all levels, from sole proprietorships (no impovrished underclass to provide cheap labor for mom-and-pop-killing Wal-Marts) to multinationals (e.g., Ikea, Ericsson, Volvo, Saab, etc.)

If you are interested in learning the truth about tax policy, I recommend Citizens for Tax Justice -- in particular their graph of marginal tax rates