The Top 10% of income earners paid 71% of federal income tax

Originally posted by Laokin

Originally posted by GeorgiaGirl

Originally posted by Laokin

Originally posted by trust_no_one
so they're paying 71% of federal income tax revenues but i bet they are receiving more than 71% of total income.

sorry in a hurry wasnt able to check if this has been brought up already

Right. Absolutely correct, as has been covered by me and a few other posters in here.

You've brought it up, but it is WRONG. Absolutely wrong. They are most DEFINITELY NOT receiving more than 71% of total income.

In 2009, if we're talking about the top 1%: their share of the country's adjusted gross income (AGI) was 16.9%, and they paid an effective tax rate of 24% of their income which is the HIGHEST RATE PERCENTAGE-WISE OF ANY INCOME GROUP. www.taxfoundation.org... Go down to Table 1 and take a look.

So you can cover it over and over, but you will be wrong every time.

*Sigh*

You are aware that the top 1% pays 0% effective tax?

30 Major Corporations Paid No Income Taxes In The Last Three Years, While Making $160 Billion

Reality says you're wrong. Call me when you wake up.

edit on 21-2-2012 by Laokin because: (no reason given)

Sigh back at you.

You are aware we are talking about income tax, right? Income tax from income.

Here's some more data for you:

Since 2001, the IRS has also been presenting data on a small subset of the top 1 percent, the top 0.1 percent (the top 10 percent of the top 1 percent). In 2009, this top 0.1 percent filed 137,982 tax returns, reporting 7.8 percent of all adjusted gross income earned and paying approximately 17.1 percent of the nation's federal individual income taxes. The average income for a tax return in the top 0.1 percent was $4.4 million in 2009, while the average amount of income tax paid was $1.07 million, indicating an average effective individual income tax rate of 24.3 percent. It is worth noting that while the average income of a taxpayer in the top 0.1 percent declined in 2009, the effective tax rate for this group actually rose from 2008 to 2009. This counterintuitive result is explained by the diminished capital gains and dividend income on high-income tax returns, income sources that are taxed at lower rates. With their 2009 income more dominated by ordinary income taxed at higher rates, their average rate on high-income consequently rose.

[Note: This very top income group actually has a lower average effective income tax rate than the rest of the top 1 percent of returns because these extremely high-income returns are more likely to have income from capital gains and dividends, which are typically taxed at lower rates. It's worth pointing out that in the case of capital gains and dividends, income derived from these sources has already been taxed once by the corporate income tax, which is not included here, meaning the average effective tax rate numbers can be somewhat misleading.]

www.taxfoundation.org...

First of all, notice the top 0.1% made 7.8 of all income, but paid 17.1 percent of all taxes. Also notice in the 2nd paragraph that when they are talking about capital gains taxes, these funds have already been taxed once, and so they are effectively being taxed TWICE.

This is a very complex topic, but you are throwing around the official OWS propaganda. Sighs and all.

Originally posted by peck420

Originally posted by Laokin
Money is Finite.

If this is the basis of your ideology, you have already lost.

Money is nothing more than a medium of exchange.

And the medium of exchange comes from a finite resource.

There is a finite amount of USD in circulation. The more you add to the circulation the less each one is worth.

In order to circumvent the issue of finite resources used for money, we'd have to start using trade instead of dollars as money.

And trade is intrinsically backed by finite resources. Once all the trees are gone, there is no wood, once all the cows are gone, there is no beef.

Once all the USD is gone, they can print more, which reduces the value of the USD, making it effectively the same amount, broken into smaller portions.


Money is not a medium for exchange. Money is WHAT IS BEING EXCHANGED, not the medium in which it's done by.

The stock market is a medium of exchange. What they exchange is money.

Do you get it yet?


Sale is the medium, money is the exchange. Exchange equates to trade.

reply to post by Laokin


Who told you that?

This is about Income Tax, not Corporations. Your on the wrong thread.

Originally posted by Blaine91555
reply to post by Laokin

 

Who told you that?

This is about Income Tax, not Corporations. Your on the wrong thread.

The top 1% hide their income in their corporation, so their effective income tax doesn't reflect their total reserves.


This is all interconnected. You can't say corporations don't matter when the top 1% own the corporations.


This is called money laundering and tax evasion which are white collar crimes.

This is how the super rich got SUPER rich.

This is essentially why corporations really exist (the true motive behind corporatocracy), and why they are supposed to pay corporate tax, which they aren't even paying. Which makes the ones at the top even richer, as they can cut personal checks out of the corporations funding.

There is a 100% correlation between the two.

I'm not wrong, you just don't know enough.

Fairness in paying taxes has nothing to do with total amounts and everything to do with percentage of gross income. The wealthy should be paying the same proportionately in taxes as do those in the middle class.
Anything less is unfair. Those with smaller incomes pay a proportionally higher percentage of their income in all kinds of taxes, making it damn hard to live on the median income in this country, which hovers around $50,000, give or take and dropping (while the incomes of the wealthy continue to rise!). The top 10% is probably making about 90% of the total income in this country, which makes their 70% of the total of federal taxes paid a bit short. Millionaires should not be paying effective tax rates of under 15% - which is what the lowest of the income brackets pay. Some multi-million dollar highly profitable corporations pay no taxes at all, yet they suck at the government teat for their share of corporate welfare, kickbacks and subsidies, all the while outsourcing good jobs and leaving the American worker in the lurch. Where's the fairness in that?

Capitalism is all about abusing the weak.

This is why the rich are so rich... because they have abused and manipulated their way to the top. Do you think they need to pay chinese workers .21 an hour yet take home $500,000 salarys for coordinating the abuse of ethic groups?

Im sure the rich would sell children and sex slaves if it made a buck.... but yet here we are with laws and regulations to prevent such abuse. Its the same with selling products to consumers.. and creating jobs.

Taxes are there to force the greedy psychopaths that steamroll everyone in frount of them to unintentionally help the country upon which they are a parasite. In the future there will be no money.... and like a camel through the eye of a needle they will be mutilated.

Originally posted by boeserwolf
The top 10% is probably making about 90% of the total income in this country, which makes their 70% of the total of federal taxes paid a bit short.

It's 43.2%. The top 10% of income earners are earning 43.2% of the AGI in the country. www.taxfoundation.org... Go down to Table 1.

Originally posted by Laokin
And the medium of exchange comes from a finite resource.

Incorrect. We have many infinite resources. Services being one of them.

There is a finite amount of USD in circulation. The more you add to the circulation the less each one is worth.

Also incorrect. The absolute number of dollars in circulation is meaningless on its own. Which is why it is always compared to the 'value' of the nation that issues it. If your economy is growing, you can print money at the same rate with no loss of value.

In order to circumvent the issue of finite resources used for money, we'd have to start using trade instead of dollars as money.

What is the price of tea in China? The quantity of a resource has no bearing on the medium of exchange we use. It will have bearing on the value of that resource, but that is not the topic.

And trade is intrinsically backed by finite resources. Once all the trees are gone, there is no wood, once all the cows are gone, there is no beef.

Once all the USD is gone, they can print more, which reduces the value of the USD, making it effectively the same amount, broken into smaller portions.

See above. Both arguements (and examples) are incorrect.

Money is not a medium for exchange. Money is WHAT IS BEING EXCHANGED, not the medium in which it's done by.

Again incorrect. Money is the medium for exchange. I trade my services to get products; ie: food, shelter, etc. Problem, my employer does not grow food, build shelter, etc.

They circumvented this problem by introducing a common medium of exchange. We call this common medium money. I can trade my services at point A in exchange for 'money', which I can exchange for the goods/services of my choosing at point B.

The stock market is a medium of exchange. What they exchange is money.

Incorrect. The stock market is a medium of exchange where you exchange your services/products for ownership in business. We just happen to use our medium of exchange (money) to expedite the process.

Do you get it yet?

Excellent question.

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by chapterhouse
How can you say that when 99% of all income is earned by 1% in this country. Not very informed are you?

How can I say that the rich pay most of the taxes in this country? I can say it by quoting IRS Stats.

No....You say it by quoting Heritage Foundation Stats...who in tiny print explains they pulled numbers from the IRS and the "Tax Foundation" but offers absolutely no explanation as to how or by what method and as I have discovered in the past, that lack of citation with the Heritage Foundation is usually not accidental.

Both the Heritage Foundation and The Tax Foundation operate with the core mission of protecting conservative rhetoric with often faulty research and opinion.

I would be interested in how they actually derived the numbers. "Income earners"? did it include just payroll? Or capital gains?

Also...the chart measured Income Taxes whilst seeming to ignore that only 40% of federal tax reciepts come from Income tax...the other 40% comes from PAYROLL tax which is largely born by the middle and lower class.

Where is payroll tax in those calculations?

How can X % pay no taxes at all when they are paying payroll taxes tax out of every paycheck? Something someone like Mitt Romney does not do as he declares capital gains and enjoys his reduced tax rate.

And the most obvious answer ..

The reason the most affluent 10 percent pay a greater share of taxes, even with the Bush era tax cuts is that they are getting a greater share of total income year after year.

A 2011 study by the CBO found that the top earning 1% of households gained about 275% after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007

The lower earning 80% of American households now have less than half of the share of total income in America (also after federal taxes and income transfers).[9]

From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[10]

As of 2006, the United States had one of the highest levels of income inequality, as measured through the Gini index, among similar developed or high income countries.[11]

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by Laokin
.If it's not a lack of understanding in math, then there was a clear agenda with this thread which means you know exactly what you did.

So I'm going to presume you've made a naive mistake, rather than to jump to the conclusion that this thread is part of a conspiracy itself.

However, it can only be one or the other. There is no third option.

You presume that Im either stupid or part of a conspiracy and there is no third option. But there is: I dont really believe that rich people should be taxed disproportionately more because I believe in not punishing success.

This is interesting. I can see how that could be an ideal, and so generally applied in this situation!

For the record I agree with you. I believe that a just system could be held to stand the test of time, towards the benefit of the people with a flat tax system.

The problem is that we are looking at just a piece of the equation, and trying to argue how it would benefit the final outcome, when all the variables and answers are in flux.

If all else were equal and fair, flat tax all around. Because imbalances in a just system exist, more imbalances are used to compensate for a variety of agendas. Some to keep the system from grinding to a halt, some to further allocate wealth, and on and on...

What I've been trying to say throughout all of my on topic posts is that simply taking one factor and using as at face value, to a very complex mostrosity, does a disservice to the outcome you are trying to reach.

You can't realize this ideal of yours, without undoing the purposefully complex system, full of loopholes and right offs. You can't even objectively analyze who is earning what, and who is paying what. Nobody knows for sure! Not you, not I, not the corrupt government, nobody. There is a lack of confidence in the system to such an extent, that value is close to meaningless.

So if we root out the systemic corruption, implement the ideal of a flat tax system you seem to advocate. Until then, all this trying to assess statistics and trying to decipher a lot of nonsense will get us nowhere.

reply to post by Laokin


You see, there is the problem. People not only don't understand how taxes are applied they allow themselves to be manipulated based on false information.

That graph from the IRS is true. The top 1% pay 39% of all Income Taxes, which is what this thread is about.

You seem to be talking about Capital Gains. First you earn income through salaries you are paid and are taxed based on your level of income. The people who earn the most income pay the highest rate.

Then you invest that money into business or commodities taking a huge risk that your investment will earn you a profit after taxes on your Capital Gains. Then that same money is taxed again.

If the taxes are to high, people stop investing because the risk is to great. That means less jobs and less productivity.

Corporations are not just the executive officers. They are the employees and investors also. They are the retirement funds of ordinary people who are hoping to increase their retirement income through investments.

The bad things are done by executive officers and not the corporations they work for. It's dishonest people in charge that are the real problem.

You raise taxes on employers, they either raise their prices to consumers or reduce what they pay employees to compensate. The only other option is to fail and close their doors. Then their workers loose their jobs, their investors who are average people through their retirement investments for the most part loose all their investment.

According to IRS statistics in 2007 they collected $248.6 billion coming from individual taxpayers. So the top 10% pays 71% of 248.6 billion and I'm supposed to feel sorry for that 10%? We are talking about the top 10% of all income earners combined, that can afford luxuries far surpassing what many Americans would consider rich. The top 10% are the stinkin filthy rich. As Chris Rock once said "Shack is rich. But whoever pays Shack is wealthy." Meanwhile Americans are increasingly losing their buying power. It not just the rich fault, but they are the main benefactors of this dysfunctional system.

Originally posted by Wertdagf
Capitalism is all about abusing the weak.

This is why the rich are so rich... because they have abused and manipulated their way to the top.

No, that is the excuse people make as for why they are not themselves rich...you tell yourself that the only way the rich could have made their money is by abuse and manipulation.

That is definitely true for some of the rich. No doubt. But not all.

My family and I are not rich. My husband is the first from his family to ever go to college. But I don't envy the rich, or begrudge them their fortune. What they have does not diminish what I have.

I don't know why I am wasting my breath. The hatred of "the rich" is so ingrained in so many of you that nothing I can say will make a difference.

Go on and hate the rich with one hand, while the other hand is happy to take whatever you can from "the government"...which is 70% funded by those you hate. Those evil rich.

Here is a graphic to dumb it down for the people who obviously don't get it.



There's the evil rich with a gun aimed at him and the thug is the Government with the people who support this stupidity as the get away driver.

So where is the morality?

So where are the ethics?

If people do not understand the difference between right and wrong then..........

reply to post by GeorgiaGirl


O yeah i know how hard the rich had to work.... LOL

Sitting in an office making some phone calls. I wonder how much we could increase the pay of chinese factory workers if we cut the takehome pay of its CEO in half... maybe from 300,000 down to 150,000 Hopefully that fool can manage to live off of 150,000 a year for sitting at a desk.

reply to post by Blaine91555

You see, there is the problem. People not only don't understand how taxes are applied they allow themselves to be manipulated based on false information.

Yourself included:

First you earn income through salaries you are paid and are taxed based on your level of income. The people who earn the most income pay the highest rate.

While you are correct to say that it is income that determines how much tax is owed, you seem to want to argue that the taxed activity is earned income, but there is no section in the income tax code that would support that contention. There is no specified taxed activity known as "earned income" within the current tax code. Nor is their any specified taxed activity called "salary".

Are you suggesting that the taxed activity of the so called "Personal Income Tax" is "earned income"? If so, where in the tax code did you reach this determination?

reply to post by Skyfloating


they also earn roughly around 500% more than me...
maybe there's a connection???

want me to pay a bigger share?? give me a raise!!!

reply to post by Wertdagf


Unless you have sat in that chair, I would hesitate to comment.

2nd.

Hate taxes? Hate Big Government? Then you can move to glorious Somalia and enjoy "freedom" from taxes and government! The nirvana of a libertarian paradise by the sea. Yes you can keep it all in Somalia.

demagogue = "1. a political agitator who appeals with crude oratory to the prejudice and passions of the mob" see Grover Norquist

"The government is stealing your money" "Sure you're not rich right now... but if, no, no, WHEN you get rich that will be unfair. No worse than unfair, downright criminal."

The goverment can't do anything right crowd...except the military ofcourse. Yawwwwwwn. Pay up Greedy oinkers.

Figures represent the rates in place at the beginning and ending year of each presidency.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 92% - 91%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25%

John F. Kennedy
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 91%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25%

Lyndon B. Johnson
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income: Over $400,000: 91% - Over $200,000: 75.25%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25% - 26.9%

Richard M. Nixon
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $200,000: 77% - 70%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 27.5% - 36.5%

Gerald R. Ford
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over 200,000: 70%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 36.5% - 39.875%

Jimmy Carter
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $203,200 - $215,400: 70%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 39.875% - 28%

Ronald Reagan
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income: over $215,400: 69.125% - over $29,750: 28%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 20% - 28%

George H.W. Bush
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income: Over $30,950: 28% - Over $86,500: 31%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 28% - 28.93%

Bill Clinton
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income: over $250,000: 39.6% - over $288,350: 39.6%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 29.19% - 21.19%

George W. Bush
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income: Over $297,350: 39.1% - Over $357,700: 35%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 21.17% - 15.35%

Barack Obama
Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income: over $372,950 - over 388,350: 35%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 15%

ABC News

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
on whose backs did they make that money ?

I know 3 top 10%ers, they "work" 25 hours a week and have "their people" handle all of the flak, blowback and day to day work. being available via smartphone on the golf course is not working, lol

it is a pittance for them to pay it

they should pay more

No. Period. I'm a top 5%er and I work 50-60 hours a week and I don't have any "people" to take the flak. Nor do I play golf, which I consider a waste of time EVEN THOUGH business deals are made there. I started out at the minimum wage and worked my way up, year after year. Get off the dole and do the same thing.