http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/04/028845.php --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How is it screwed up? It's not that they didn't pay throughout the year, it's that they paid the right amount, or in some cases, too much, and do not owe MORE at the end of the year.
I don't think that's right. I think the following line: means that the didn't owe the government anything for federal taxes, so that whatever they paid was refunded. If they "paid the right amount", they would still have had federal tax liability for the year...they just paid over the course rather than all at once. The article makes it seem like 69M people did not have to pay a dime in federal taxes, and whatever they paid was returned to them, though they paid payroll and state taxes.
That is not true. As Brian pointed out most people paid federal income tax throughout the year. You should fact check your links in the future.
This chart is terrible. So the bulk of taxable income is in the 50K -500K tax brackets? To end our deficit problems we just need to soak the middle class?
They paid no federal income tax. Whether that was because of breaks, or otherwise, that is a fact. Do you care to dispute it with something substantive? The links stand.
Yep I dispute it. The douchebag you linked insinuated that 45% of people don't pay "any income taxes". Which is not true. From your link: You see, payroll taxes are withheld from employee pay for federal income taxes(FIT) owed by the employees. The amount of FIT is determined by information employees provide on Form W-4 at hire. So it's accurate to say closer to 25% don't pay "any income taxes".
Other stats have shown that the top 2% of Americans own 80% of everything. This new graph is about income, not assets, and only the small part of rich people's income taxed under the tax laws, since most escapes. So all it shows is that the wrong people are having to cover the tax load. The top 2% are getting away with paying way too little tax. Obama just wants a tiny increase, back to the days of Clinton and Eisenhower.
No, he's saying "45 Percent of Americans Don't Owe 2010 Federal Income Taxes" on April 15 because they had had too much deducted from their paychecks. So they DID pay taxes, but on April 15 they didn't owe. Then you tried to make it personal with the "hurt your feelings" BS.
You're confusing payroll taxes with income taxes. Everyone who works pays payroll taxes. The number who pay $0 in income tax is near 50%, which is fine by me.
Well, if he's saying that he's wrong, because it's not what is being reported. If they paid federal income taxes over the year and owed no federal income taxes, then they'd get all that they paid back as a return. It's not that they didn't owe any ADDITIONAL federal income tax at the end of the year. It's that they didn't owe any at all. Ed O.
Only 15 million got all that they paid back as a return. I know the federal tax is under the name of "payroll tax" but that includes FIT as well as Social Security and Medicare according to everything I've read
So to put numbers to this, this is how I see the breakdown. Let's say my notional paycheck is $1000. B/c I put, say, 2 exemptions, let's make it a nice round 10% tax bracket that's taken out each paycheck for "Federal Income Tax". That's $100. Let's say I live in WA, so my state income tax = 0. My FICA (since I make less that 106k /yr) is 7.65%, or $76.50. So my net pay is $824.50, and I paid $76.50 for Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid and $100 in federal income tax (to pay for things like DoD, SS/M/M overruns, interest on the debt, etc). What the article was saying (and I think Denny and PapaG as well) is that 45% of people got that $100 per paycheck back. They had no Federal Income liability. You're correct that they still had to pay that $76.50, b/c that goes to SS/M/M (and they MAY have received a refund big enough to cover that, but I don't think that was the point of the article). I think that the premise of the OP was that 45% of people are ending up paying $0 per year toward Federal Income Tax (to pay for DoD, SS/M/M overruns, debt interest, etc) and then a bunch of them saying "I'm satisfied with that!". Not "I paid $100 per paycheck, and on April 15 didn't have to pay a dime extra, and I'm satisfied with that!" Someone pipe up if I'm way off here.
If that's the case, why does the article specify that some people paid more in payroll than they received in tax returns?
