Colonel Taylor wrote:O Really wrote:
Do you think a graduated income tax is thievery? Yes or No.
I don't think we have one do you?
How can it be graduated system when half the folks pay nothing and others get money back. Do you agree we don't have a graduated system?
I think a flat tax would be the fairest with no deductions or loop holes.
First, that crack-addled far-right fantasy world where "half the folks pay nothing", does not exist. Romney's 47% still pays state, county, city, sales, gas, social security, medicare/medicaid, property tax and excise tax on cigarettes and alcohol. Half of them pay payroll taxes (and probably work harder than Romney ever did in his life.) Of the half that don't, most are retirees who have paid taxes all their lives. Of the tiny number remaining, you're talking about the disabled, recent graduates who are not paying taxes yet but will, and those recently unemployed but who will resume paying full taxes.
When the right-wingnuts complain about "Here's What Really Happened on Nov. 6; 7M Less Whites Voted", you can be sure that a lot of those non-voters were Republicans who paid taxes all their lives only to be declared parasites by Romney.
It was a claim by a moron, for morons.
Second,
the graduated system where the rich pay more, has been reversed. The rich pay a lower rate than you do.
The rich were paying taxes on their income over $400,000 at a
70 percent rate when Reagan entered the White House. Now they pay taxes at no more than
35 percent. Obama only wanted to move it back to 39.6 percent.
And that's before loopholes. After exploiting loopholes, the richest pay taxes at about half that rate. In 2005, for instance, the top 400 income-earners in the United States took home an average $214 million. They paid only
18.5 percent of that in federal income tax.
Citation
According to a February 2011 analysis of 2007 IRS statistics by a columnist for Tax Notes, the average taxpayer residing in New York City's posh Helmsley Building (owned before her death by Leona Helmsley, who once reportedly said that "only the little people pay taxes") paid only
14.7 percent of his income in federal taxes while New York City janitors and security guards (such as those employed by the Helmsley Building) paid about 24 percent. Helmsley residents were taxed less for Social Security and Medicare, and much of their $1.17 million average income was in capital gains, which are taxed at the same rate as the wages of modestly paid (up to $34,000 a year) workers. [Forbes, 2-22-2011; Tax Notes, 2-21-2011]
And that's without tricks like off-shore tax havens. Mitt Romney
paid a
14 percent effective tax rate last year. It's widely believed - with good reason - that Romney is holding back tax returns because he paid far
less.
