Comments on: America’s top 1 percent pay 40 percent of all taxes

By: sunseeking

sunseeking — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:12:29 +0000

The last post is 45% off. The top 1% owns half the wealth in this country but that is a mute point. Income taxes are bases on INCOME for a specific year. The Estate Tax taxes accumulated wealth after it has been taxed many times in a lifetime. In 2005 the top one percent EARNED 18% of total income and PAID 38% of federal income taxes.

Also, why do we not analyze work habits when we talk about income disparity. Those in higher income brackets have more education, put in more hours at work and watch less television than those in the bottom income brackets. My husband works at least 70 hours a week in a very stressful job and has to travel and be away from his family. He has been doing this for 25 YEARS. He is a first generation college graduate not a trust fund baby. Only 2% of the top 1% are trust fund babies. The rest started out as the average American. You want to be in the top 1%, go for it but you will have to work for it.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:24:54 +0000

The last post is 30% off. The top 1% controls 95% of the wealth in this country. Why do you think NONE of the reforms spoken about on Wall Street have been instituted?

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:39:41 +0000

Many people have asked here about how much of the total income the top 1% made. The answer is about 65%, so if they are paying only 40%, that’s a pretty good deal.

By: JJames

JJames — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:35:33 +0000

I am curious to know how much federal income tax ebay.inc pays yearly?

By: drewbie

drewbie — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:45:59 +0000

if the income of the rich went up faster than their taxes went down, then the rich paid more in taxes. That’s the opposite of what you said a couple posts earlier (July 31st, 2009 3:37 pm GMT).

And of course they invest in stocks and interest bearing options. That’s what investments are supposed to be: money bearing. But the while the company they buy stock in has their money, it allows them to grow, which usually translates into pay raises and/or hiring more staff.

By: jwer

jwer — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:51:07 +0000

drewbie- OK, I can see how you got that, but that wasn’t what I said; I said they keep more of their money after purchases that might be taxable by a sales tax, not that they would not then spend anything else. However, what you are suggesting is that they will use that surplus to invest in a way that would “trickle down” which is clearly not true, as the gap between their wealth and everyone else’s continues to grow. This suggests that what they’re actually doing is investing it in stocks and sticking it in other interest-bearing accounts, and are therefore the only ones seeing a significant profit.

As for your second sentence, no, it means that that the income of the rich went up faster than their taxes went down.

By: Siobhan Sack

Siobhan Sack — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:07:42 +0000

As Mike said, under the present system, everyone should pay Federal income tax, that way everyone is a stakeholder and would pay closer attention to how government spends tax dollars. On the heels of this past week’s “Beer Summit”, we’ll use some suds for different teachable moment. I saw this a year ago, the numbers do not reflect the increases that will apply once the tax cuts expire and will skew the numbers further.

Beer and Taxes.

Ten guys get together every weekend at their favorite bar, and drink beer.

The bar tab always comes out to an even $100.

Normally, everybody would pay $10 and it would be fine, but these guys
decide to model their payments on the U.S. Tax Code.

(The people with the lowest income would pay the least, and the
highest would pay the most.)

So, the first week they did this, the first four guys paid nothing.
The fifth guy paid a buck.
The sixth guy paid $3.
The seventh guy paid $7.
The eighth guy paid $12.
The ninth guy paid $18.
And the richest guy paid 59 dollars…

After becoming regulars at the bar, the bar owner came up and said
that he really liked having them show up every week, and told them
that he was going to give them a 20% cut of the price of beer.

So, since they were modeling their beer tab on the U.S. Tax Code, they
rebalanced the bill that way also.

After the cut, the first four guys still paid nothing.
The fifth guy went from paying a buck to paying nothing.
(A savings of 100% for him.)
The sixth guy went from paying $3, to paying $2.
(A savings of 33% for him.)
The seventh guy went from paying $7 to paying $5.
( A savings of 28%.)
The eighth guy went from paying $12 to paying $9.
( A savings of 25%)
The ninth guy went from paying $18 to paying $14.
( A savings of 22%)
And the richest guy went from paying $59 to paying $49.
( savings of 16%.)

The first four guys said: “We got screwed, we didn’t get any of the tax cut.”

The fifth guy said: “I got screwed too, I only got a buck, and the
richest guy got ten. The system exploits the poor, and the tax cut was
only for the rich.

So the first five guys get the 10th guy out in the parking lot and beat him up.

The next week, the tenth guy is in Macao, and doesn’t pay any taxes at
all, and the other guys get to make up the difference in the bar tab……….

By: drewbie

drewbie — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:48:26 +0000

You said earlier that you don’t believe the rich spend a proportional amount of their income.

The second sentence was related because the money the rich didn’t pay in taxes made it’s way down through investment to the poor / less rich. If taxes went down (for the rich) or stayed the same (for everyone else) and tax revenue was up, then it must be the case that people were making more money.

By: jwer

jwer — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:37:54 +0000

drewbie -

I never said that, I was just pointing out that interest on hundreds of thousands of dollars is empirically more useful than on thousands.

But your first sentence is also not necessarily related to your second. Who paid more taxes? Not the rich.

By: drewbie

drewbie — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:16:48 +0000

jwer -
If you think money in the hands of the rich stays there, you’re mistaken. While Bush’s wars did run up the deficit, tax revenue actually went up after his tax cuts went through.