I was responding to the "who are the rich" part of the question. And no matter where you live, if you are in the top 2% of all earners in the country, I personally would consider you rich. As for as taxation goes, because I am nor below the 30k or over 100k, a flat tax sounds very reasonable to me. The fact that half of all earners do not pay any taxes really upsets me, a flat tax and a complete overhaul of current tax credits/deductions is certainly needed.
In all honesty, yes I would. To my way of thinking the current system of taxation is so patently unfair and is so easily taken advantage of it has become clear we must have serious tax reform.
Not necessarily. Some can be used for ferreting out fraud, some to bolster investigations for business taxes and international taxes. Some can be reassigned to other jobs (like investigating the massive amounts of medicare and SS fraud...), some can take early retirement, and there will be other natural attrition. And some may be laid off. How do you feel about Obamacare potentially seeing the elimination of over 3 million jobs in insurance? Point being is that whenever there is change it is unfortunate that some will be negatively affected. Whenever a company gets bought out, or a union strikes or technology changes... some jobs are eliminated. The hope is that in so doing other jobs are created. It's the way of the world.
Uhm... I feel great about that. If there are actually 3 million people (1% of the US population!) working in medical insurance, then that seems like WAY too many. Nothing personal, of course. Agreed. And I wasn't bleeding for either the IRS agents or the H&R Block people. barfo
As someone in the industry, I do have to admit we're bloated with administration and so forth. But in defense, I will say most of it comes from lawsuits, legislation... we've been forced to evolve to what healthcare is today.
it's not me you have to worry about in the "pay more in a flat tax" scenario. It's those who don't pay a dime all of a sudden losing 15% (or whatever) of their income. To go from 10 or 13 to 15 isn't a huge stretch.
Yes, exactly. For someone who is barely keeping it together, giving up a significant chunk of their income in tax is not going to be easy. Whereas I expect I'll save a few tens of thousands of dollars every year. Go flat tax, go! [Will that create jobs? It will create one, eventually - I'll retire sooner, so eventually my job 'trickles down' to someone else]. I suspect there is some middle ground between the current crazy-ass Rube Goldberg scheme and the flat tax. One could easily have a progressive tax which was purely withholding-based, so that people who had income only from wages wouldn't have to file tax returns, and so that the poor (draw the line where you like, but certainly *someone* in this country qualifies as poor) don't have to pay taxes. barfo
I know what it is, but I think you thought you were making a point with it when it actually supports my previous statement.
Stop coddling the super-rich: Buffett http://news.yahoo.com/stop-coddling-super-rich-buffett-084140678.html
At 100% tax rate, Buffett is a $billionaire, and the tax revenue funds about 4 seconds of the federal deficit.
Warren Buffett would know better than I, but I was under the impression that the economy wasn't that great in 1976-77. How was he able to reduce his tax burden to 17.4% of his taxable income while the rest of his office workers were taxed at 36%? I was under the impression that the highest tax bracket was 35% right now (because of those infernal Bush/Obama cuts). Is he including state taxes with that? It couldn't be that he's giving buckets of money to charity, right? I'm relatively certain that if his office workers gave to charity, their tax would go down as well. I think that you'd find people much more receptive to a couple of percentage point increase in highest tax bracket (or capital gains) if you had a concurrent increase in taxes for those 50M people not paying any, and a cut of 1.5T in spending.
I imagine it is because most of his income is capital gains, whereas his office workers have w-2 wages. barfo
That's great if Buffett wants to pay more tax. But he should do the quick calculation that shows it won't make a noticeable dent in the deficit. Using the numbers he provided, we could double those 400 mega-richs' income tax rate, and generate a whopping $19 billion in revenue. Wow, that will really cut into the $1.6 TRILLION deficit!!
He's proposing to raise rates on all income over $1 million, affecting 236,883 returns. Not 400. barfo
Here's the proper response http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...-set-example-and-send-check-5-b#ixzz1V6SASwqF Put up or shut up, Warren.
every frothy lib on my facebook feed has been posting that article. its as if someone told them to. I've noticed a HUGE spike in anti-republican/tea party talk from my crunchy granola friends in the last 2-3 weeks. like most of us give a fuck.
