<p>MaineLonghorn–In my opinion you may be overpaying, if anything. Other people are under-paying. I think we all know(or maybe some people don’t get it) that we need to pay for roads, bridges, schools, police, fire departments, the military, etc, but some people aren’t doing their fair share. Like those making a lot of money and not paying anything. That doesn’t apply to you. But if you really think you should pay nothing, good luck if you have a fire, need the police or need to drive down a road or cross a bridge.</p>
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<p>And what about the 50% of American households that pay no federal income tax at all? When are they going to pay their “fair share”?</p>
<p>That’s just exactly the issue. People who are making almost nothing shouldn’t have to pay taxes, but I believe that lots of wealthy people pay nothing and yet they still use our roads and bridges and expect help from fire depts, police and the military.</p>
<p>If you really believe that wealthy people pay “nothing” then I have a great beach home in Iowa to sell to you. Wealthy people pay proportionally more in taxes than any other group of people. It is the middle class and lower-middle class that pays nothing at all and uses social services the most.</p>
<p>I’m just going to let other people respond to this.</p>
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<p>You are wrong. Maybe if you inherit a lot of money and put it in a bank account and do not work at all, your income taxes might be zero. The vast majority of wealthy people want to remain wealthy and that means working or investing their funds in a manner that will produce profits which are taxed.</p>
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<p>Correct…</p>
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<p>This is fun.</p>
<p>Where’s dstark? In his/her example of $100, the bottom 50% of American households might have $0.40 each or a total of $2, 45 times fewer than that 1 person with $90.</p>
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<p>Where did that 1 person get that $90? How could he/she earn $90 where the rest $1.1? What’s the rule of earning $?</p>
<p>“MaineLonghorn–In my opinion you may be overpaying, if anything. Other people are under-paying. I think we all know(or maybe some people don’t get it) that we need to pay for roads, bridges, schools, police, fire departments, the military, etc, but some people aren’t doing their fair share. Like those making a lot of money and not paying anything. That doesn’t apply to you.”</p>
<p>But guess what? The tax increases from every possible direction are being aimed at MaineLonghorn and those like him or her. Not just the billionaires and millionaires who are supposedly “not paying their fair share.” It is aimed at everyone who makes more than 200K as an individual or 250K as a family. Those are the guilty, evil rich that are being targeted, not the bogus examples like Warren Buffett. He’ll still find a way to duck taxes. Most people can’t, and many of those people are already paying high tax rates. Apparently that isn’t enough, to cover their share of the roads and schools, police and military?</p>
<p>I pay 31% of my total salary to all the different taxes required. We take care of our own road and the kids have always gone to private schools, we are full pay for everything, always. My husband has a family full of law enforcement (that have truly sacrificed) and we both served in a war zone in the military. So I think we do our part, of giving and not taking. I don’t object to taxes getting raised somewhat, but now they are looking at forcing us to be unable to contribute to our 401K’s (fought for through years of negotiation), raising tax rates, limiting deductions, etc, etc…basically hitting us from all sides because of a randomly selected magic number. And having the audacity to say we aren’t paying our fair share. Instead of thank you for paying so much, we are desperate to keep spending to keep our constituents votes, so we need to ask you to pay even more. It would be okay if we knew it would really fix the problem and that EVERYBODY was going to live under the same system</p>
<p>Buffett, making similar remarks in all three interviews, said he is happy with the use of his name on the legislation, but added he doesn’t know all of the details included in the proposal, and the only plan he advocated was a higher tax rate on people who “make money with money only.”</p>
<p>He noted he was describing a very limited number of wealthy Americans who earn the majority of their income through capital gains, which is taxed at a 15 percent rate.</p>
<p>“What I’m talking about would not apply to someone that made $5 million a year as a baseball player or $10 million a year on media,” Buffett said on Fox Business Network. “It would apply only to probably 50,000 people out of 309 million who have huge incomes, pay very low taxes. There should be a policy that applies to people with money who earn lots of money and pay very low rates. If they earn it by normal jobs what I say would not hit them at all.”</p>
<p>[Warren</a> Buffett sparks storm over millionaires? tax-rate hike - The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room](<a href=“http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/184761-warren-buffett-my-plan-was-not-the-buffett-rule]Warren”>http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/184761-warren-buffett-my-plan-was-not-the-buffett-rule)</p>
<p>How come when we talk about the tax burden of the well-off, we’re talking about “all the different taxes” they’re required to pay, but when we talk about the poor and working-class, we’re talking about how they don’t pay any taxes at all? Do people honestly think low income wage earners and the middle class don’t pay huge amounts in taxes in relationship to their total income? Really?</p>
<p>does anyone have solid info on when JP Morgan’s $4.6 million donation to the NYPD was made?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Home/article/ny-13.htm[/url]”>http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Home/article/ny-13.htm</a> </p>
<p>months old or trying to buy physical protection due to current events?</p>
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<p>People deny things all the time that don’t support the agenda. Doesn’t mean they don’t believe it.</p>
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<p>A zero percent federal income tax has no effect on a wage earner’s total income. The bottom 40% of income earners in this country actually make a profit from the government each year-they pay no taxes and the government pays them. The top 10 percent of earners pay 73% of all federal income taxes. </p>
<p><a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html[/url]”>http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html</a></p>
<p>A little off topic…but wow …Hong Kong’s stock market is really getting beaten up.</p>
<p>Cuse0507… i hope your education has been a good one. Why do you think that 10% of the people pay 73% of the income tax? And what percentage of gdp is the SS tax?</p>
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<p>Well…except for the ones who don’t because they have the skill, savvy, or staff to avoid them. Yet, they still live here and enjoy every advantage of every taxpayer-provided service from paved roads and food inspection to armed security forces to protect them. This never seems to raise as much ire with certain people as those instances out there where a working single mother of two making $22,000 — just below the federal poverty level — has a deduction or two that means she doesn’t pay income taxes. She can’t afford to buy a home or send her kids to college…yet, she’s the moocher. Something twisted about that. </p>
<p>[Frank</a> Mccourt Taxes | McCourts pitch a shutout on taxes - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/24/business/la-fi-hiltzik24-2010feb24]Frank”>http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/24/business/la-fi-hiltzik24-2010feb24)</p>
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<p>Everytime I think I’ve learned something here (yes, I should learn elsewhere), I get confused again, and sometimes by the same statements.</p>
<p>So far I think I’ve learned that if you include ALL kinds of taxes, neither the very poor , low income,middle class, nor high income earners pay “no taxes”. Even the most destitute pay sales tax for example. It’s mostly multimillionaires who are “paying NO taxes”. (BTW; do they somehow get out of sales tax?) Also, if you include all kinds of taxes, (and something about the proportion of GDP), it is not easy to compare the 70 percent tax rate of fifty years ago to the income taxes of today. Right? </p>
<p>It seems to boil down to what is the “fair” proportion of your income you should pay in taxes or toward a better society, and to a certain extent, what is a “fair” lifestyle after you pay it.</p>
<p>What is it about political discussions that seem to make some folks make such extreme arguments? </p>
<p>Politics aside, I DO think it is relevant to our college students. I wonder where many of their opinions would fall in this discussion, and how many might choose a higher paying career largely so that they could pay more toward a better society, without consideration of a “fair” (based on young adult type sacrifices) lifestyle.</p>
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<p>Two answers for your first question: 1.) They make a lot of money (although not as much as people would think: an average of over $300k a year, hardly the “millionaires and billionaires” that people make them out to be) and 2.) The government needs money, and half the country pays nothing at all, so it has to come from somewhere. </p>
<p>Don’t know the answer to your second question.</p>
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<p>I may be wrong about this, but I think that the top 10 percent also owns 71% of the total wealth in the United States. Additionally, I think that people may pay taxes apart from the federal income tax. Again, I might be wrong about that though.</p>