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Ballmer, Bezos Fund Effort To Undermine Bill Gates
theodp writes "You know what they say — it takes money to avoid paying money. TechFlash reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos have contributed $100,000 each to an effort to defeat an income tax on individuals in Washington state making more than $200,000. The backers of Initiative 1098, which is set for the November ballot, include Bill Gates (Sr.), who has emerged as one of the most vocal proponents of the income tax. Under the proposal, which has drawn the ire of the Bezos and Ballmer-backed Defeat 1098, no tax would be due on the first $200K of income, 5% tax would be owed on income between $200K and $500K, and everything above $500K would be subject to a 9% tax (cutoffs are doubled for joint returns)."
If you live in the metro, own a home, and your wife stays at home with the kids - making $200,000 hardly qualifies you as "rich". Especially if you are a small business owner.
From the Summary:
(cutoffs are doubled for joint returns).
The way I take this is they'd have to make 400K before they hit the tax.
UPS Sucks
Just for the background information. The State of Washington does not have personal or corporate income tax at this time. So to add a 5% income tax, which has very little deductions, would obviously sounds like a big change for the State.
I can't really comment too much on the benefit of having the tax excised, since I live in Texas and we do not have state income tax, either. That is a real plus for me. I do like the fact that they skipped the entire section where people making less than 200k. I think that is wise.
However, to be fair. A sudden increase of 9% of the tax liability is quite a bit, from the perspective of going from 0 to 9% in one jump. Also there are no provisions on how to adjust the brackets up with the inflations in the coming decades. Keep in mind any tax code in place will be in place for a long time, so if the spirit of the law is to tax the highest income brackets, they need to address that in the proposed bill as well.
Unemployment is only 4.6% for those with a bachelor's degree or higher. Considering the kinds of jobs that are in the majority at Microsoft and Amazon, I'd say they're doing enough to create jobs already.
Source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Their winnings from the stock market wouldn't be touched by this income tax.
Blar.
In Washington state currently, people earning less than $20,000 pay 17.3% in taxes. People earning over $537,000 pay just 2.9%
Even with this law, the richest will be paying less as a percentage of income than the poorest in the state.
This study (pdf) gives the numbers.
The #1 use of your taxes is war and it's consequences, or here, or the interactive chart.
The top American marginal income rates from 1944 to 1963 were 92%. Yes, 92% of income made over the top amount, went to taxation. In 1944, if you made over $200,000, 92% went to the government. In 1963, it was $400,000. And yet, this was a period of profound economic expansion and middle class comfort. Kind of makes you want to question the "conventional wisdom" that all taxes are bad.
This is a list of American historical tax rates: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_history-june2010.pdf
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
When these guys build new houses for themselves they create jobs. When they hire help to maintain those big homes they create jobs. When they buy new cars they create jobs. When they invest their money they create jobs.
I believe it was Napoleon Hill who gave the advice that if you want to get wealthy yourself you need to hang around with rich people, because just the opportunities they let slide because they might think they are "too small" will be enough to give you a good start on your way to wealth if you're ambitious enough to go after them. It wasn't stated in those exact words, but the meaning was the same.
I'm sorry that's wrong. There is a couple of problems with this. Your hypothetical CEO would buy how many cars in a 5 year period? 1? 2? Yeah, that would really stimulate the economy. Why do you assume your CEO would build a new home? how many homes do you think your hypothetical CEO would build? If you already a place on Lake Washington, prime real estate, why would you go anywhere else?
Let's consider giving the middle class all that money, how many cars do you think 50 people making 80K would buy if they came into money? How many can now afford to let someone else do their yards? How many books/dvd/theater are they going to do? I bet a lot omre than your single CEO. Let me give you a clue, the middle class runs this country. We are the engines of this economy. This country's market is the best market in the world because we are trained to spend. We are the ultimate consumers.You people who enable to rich are just cutting your own throat. They don't need your help. If they need to talk to govt they can attend a $2000 dollar a plate fundraiser and talk to the candidate directly. They got all kinds of avenues to whine.
sri