Taxes

[MisterCreosote]

MC, I'd be very interested to know whence comes this Constitutional sanction for redistribution.

Historical interpretations of the general welfare clause aside, most taxes are "redistribution" in one way or another.

 

[heyabbott]

How much of a refund are you receiving?

maybe 1,000 mostly from the state

Whatever you do to make your living, how many of the people paying for your service or product are public or state employees? Teachers, policemen, county workers, federal workers, military...

Take all those customers away, then start bitching about your paying too much in taxes.

I am old enough and reltively smart enough, and darn it people like me, to understand what my taxes go for and I do hope that I will get my money's worth from my social security contributions, which I have paid towards since I was 14 years old, same with medicare/medicaid.

I don't complain about the teachers, the cops, the firefighter, most of the roads and infrastructure. Military? y]thats a sink hole o political spending, it could be cut 10% easily. Oh but that would hurt private defense contractors who would then hurt workers. Essentially then billions of dollars of tax money is going to pay workers for defense programs that arent required. Thats part of the real welfare state. The Ospry. Unneccessary super fighters, an additional carrier group. All have constituencies that pay good money to keep unneeded projects going. It's not the welfarre to poor people, its the government support of large private industry. Its so ingrained its needed, but the biggest welfare cheats are the fuel industry through weird depreciation and rightoffs.

All too many people and entities don't pay their fair share to such a large extent that relatively speaking I pay disproportionatly high taxes. I have been lucky enough so far that I have remained continiously employed since 1988. My wife took 4 or 5 years off but has been other employed since 1989. How about a little break? The mortgage deduction is no break, the market has taken that into consideration for 40 years. Prices reflect the deduction, remove the deuction and you wipe out middle class accumalation of unrealized gains.

I could use the money I earn more than anyone else needs my money

[please forgive spelling, typing on the phone is hard]

 

[User 11148]

.. I pay disproportionatly high taxes.

No, you really don't. If you want to say that a 20% tax rate is too high, fine ... but you pay about average.

 

[heyabbott]

No, you really don't. If you want to say that a 20% tax rate is too high, fine ... but you pay about average.

The people that make 5 times more than I do not pay 5 times more taxes. The people that make 10 times what I make really don't pay 10 times more. They cap the SS tax so rich people don't contribute nearly as much, proporationately, as I do.
They essentially killed middle class deductions, by upping the % to dedeuct medical expenses. Tuition should have some sort of deduction. Student loan interest should be dedctable. But business car leases for executives are not taxed as income and a business expense for the company.

So much unfairness to the real middle class. People who work everyday at hourly/salaried jobs and folks who own small businesses and services.

 

[MisterCreosote]

Tuition should have some sort of deduction. Student loan interest should be dedctable.

Tuition and student-loan interest ARE deductible.

 

[User 11148]

Across income ranges, when you factor in ALL taxes, pretty much everyone pays about 20%. Based on the limited information you've provided, you pay about 20%. How that can be interpreted as a disproportionate share is beyond me.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

When you factor in "ALL" taxes, its closer to 40 percent.

 

[LongTimeListener]

When you factor in "ALL" taxes, its closer to 40 percent.

LOL

 

[JackReacher]

Tuition and student-loan interest ARE deductible.

Indeed. Back when we hired our current tax guy, he looked through our previous few years of taxes and found where I didn't use my tuition from when I went back to school. Ended up filing an amendment on a return or two, which got me a decent-sized check.

 

[joe king]

Tuition and student-loan interest ARE deductible.

Better than that -- there's a tax credit for tuition (and books and other qualified post-secondary education expenses), up to $2,500 for each student.

 

[LongTimeListener]

The mortgage interest deduction penalizes people like heyabbott for being far down the road in paying off their mortgage.

Oh ****, meant to post this on First-world problems.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

LOL

How much tax do we really pay?

 

[LongTimeListener]

Yeah. That's wrong.

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[old_tony]

No matter how you cut it, the great majority of people pay more in taxes than they should because the government does WAAAAAAAAYYYY more than it should.

We need to get back to the days when politicians realize it's "Not yours to give."

Not Yours to Give : Library : Foundation for Economic Education

 

[Joe Williams]

Why is it that the "progressive" part of income taxes maxes out at 39.6% and that rate holds steady above approx. $434K or so in annual income? Maybe because the super-rich on the left don't want to really pay a disproportionate share, relative to the working "wealthy" or middle-to-upper-middle class?

I think that rate is too high, period. Those on the right who make $500K, $1M and beyond understandably would oppose a continued "progression" of the rate with additional income. But we never see the wealthiest liberals lobbying for a rate that continues to escalate and -- in the meantime -- cutting big discretionary checks to the feds, in whom they have such faith in running society. Everybody's a Republican on April 15.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Why is it that the "progressive" part of income taxes maxes out at 39.6% and that rate holds steady above approx. $434K or so in annual income? Maybe because the super-rich on the left don't want to really pay a disproportionate share, relative to the working "wealthy" or middle-to-upper-middle class?

I think that rate is too high, period. Those on the right who make $500K, $1M and beyond understandably would oppose a continued "progression" of the rate with additional income. But we never see the wealthiest liberals lobbying for a rate that continues to escalate and -- in the meantime -- cutting big discretionary checks to the feds, in whom they have such faith in running society. Everybody's a Republican on April 15.

The "left" as you put it was against the Bush tax cuts and tried to let them expire. Only certain "righties" refused to let that happen unless unemployment extensions were stopped. So the "left" continued them because they actually were concerned about those who had lost their jobs, unlike the "right", who cared only about their wealthy friends.

And it's funny. We were told that we had to keep the Bush tax cuts because of job creation, especially when 700,000 jobs were being lost in a month. Now they have expired, and there's been several years worth of monthly job gains. Hmmmm.

 

[Joe Williams]

Yo, Baron, your retorts have nothing to do with my points.

The Bush cut from 39.6 percent to 35 percent for top-earning households, in fact, has expired. But it still stays flat from the arbitrary top threshold of $434K or so. Where are the pro-taxation people among the liberal elite who, if consistent, should be pushing for the progressive rates to continue beyond that cutoff, escalating at $500K, $1M and each million or half-million after that?

If you want to pull back the super-wealthy like lobsters crawling out of the pot, that's where liberals should focus. But their own kind at the top won't even lead the way by stroking checks for what they "would" owe under such a system. Why not, if it's so righteous and government is the way to answer all questions?

You seem to want to have it both ways regarding rates on those making less than $434K or so. You grumble about "righties" who didn't want those cuts to go away, but credit "lefties" who only were concerned about people who lost their jobs. I would say that hiking rates on folks making low six figures isn't going to help the economy. And studies show that folks on unemployment hit the job market FAR MORE SERIOUSLY the closer they get to their benefits expiring. Human effing nature.

Finances are a lot like George Carlin's drivers to a lot of folks: Anyone making more than you is "rich." Anyone making less is "poor."

As for the impact of tax-rate cuts on job creation, the science on that hardly is settled, to use the asinine phrasing re: climate change. But it's been demonstrated to take place time and again.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Finances are a lot like George Carlin's drivers to a lot of folks: Anyone making more than you is "rich." Anyone making less is "poor."

That's pretty dumb.

There is an objective way of plotting incomes on a graph. And a person making $434K is objectively in the top 1 percent (or less) of incomes. Whether they feel like they're rich or poor is immaterial.

 

[old_tony]

The "left" as you put it was against the Bush tax cuts and tried to let them expire. Only certain "righties" refused to let that happen unless unemployment extensions were stopped. So the "left" continued them because they actually were concerned about those who had lost their jobs, unlike the "right", who cared only about their wealthy friends.

And it's funny. We were told that we had to keep the Bush tax cuts because of job creation, especially when 700,000 jobs were being lost in a month. Now they have expired, and there's been several years worth of monthly job gains. Hmmmm.

Some Democrat policies create damage that's too big to overcome.

New Study Blames Community Reinvestment Act For Mortgage Defaults - Investors.com

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Some Democrat policies create damage that's too big to overcome.

New Study Blames Community Reinvestment Act For Mortgage Defaults - Investors.com

First, any story that blames the media in the first five words already exposes its bias.

Second, the group they cite has received $10 million from conservative organizations. Find someone with a little less bias next time.

National Bureau of Economic Research - SourceWatch

Oh, and third, I don't see why conservatives were up in arms over it. After all, it was the result of deregulation, with is a conservative mantra. You know, less government involvement and all that, except for women's wombs.