Every American baby owes a birth tax of $150,000

Parent Cafe
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<p>I remember several years in a row paying more income tax that General Electric (they paid nothing)…so I suspect Corporations have a way to go.</p>

<p>Talking about income tax is interesting but what about asset taxes. Most middle class people pay annual taxes on their primary investment - their home. What if we had a three percent asset tax on everything over 100,000? It could replace real property taxes and become a source of revenue for schools. If we don’t redistribute the wealth peacefully, history indicates other paths will be tried.</p>

<p>Of course our taxes and debt would be reduced if we voted for Presidents who balanced their budgets…according to recent Presidencies that would mean vote Democrat…I can live with that.</p>

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<p>“What if we had a three percent asset tax on everything over 100,000?”</p>

<p>In many states, including my own, assets are already considered property and taxed like real estate.</p>

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<p>Mr.B, a wealth tax that large will destroy the country economically. Stock prices will plummet, real estate will come down in price, funding for schools will collapse, investment will fall off the face of the earth, people will lose their jobs.</p>

<p>The way to tax wealth is to tax somebody when they die. If we are a real meritocracy, a little inheritance tax should not be objectable. Of course, we are going the wrong way right now.</p>

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<p>younghoss - </p>

<p>I reread my post (#14) and ask you to please accept my apologies. The post was flippant and glib. It’s an interesting discussion about what’s now “American.”</p>

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<p>Glad I’m not a baby.</p>

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<p>Absolutely! Think nothing of it!</p>

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<p>“Corporations and businesses also pay a good chunk of all taxes. Maybe not as much as they should, but a big number all together including about half of all SS taxes.”</p>

<p>This past May my AP Calc class took a trip to the AMEX in NYC (a worker there was a former student of my current - well now former - calc teacher). He said the reason why businesses get away from paying taxes is because they don’t make any profit. The reasoning was a little confusing, but it sort of went like this. A company makes profits in its beginnings (to gain a stash of capital) and then over a period of time (enough to gain enough capital) it cuts costs and basically becomes a “non-profit organization”. It gains enough revenue to pay it’s employees and expenses, but the company itself makes no profit, so it pays no taxes. Pretty rediculous, but its no different than a real non-profit organization.</p>

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<p>Digmedia: “Wow, your note caused me to do a little research (2001 figures): The top 1% of tax filers pays almost one-third of all tax monies collected. [etc]”</p>

<p>C’mon, Dig - don’t be bashful - cite your source. I’ve been harping on the 2001 stats posted on the Rushlimbaugh.com site for months now. Of course, it’s a great example of “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” but it’s a good source of information if viewed from an analytical (rather than ideological) perspective.</p>

<p>First: The stats are based on <strong>all tax returns filed</strong>. That means my kids’ tax returns from their summer jobs are included in the bottom 50% which don’t pay any <strong>income</strong> taxes. (Still pay FICA though.) So that sort of distorts the “X% pay X%” arguments. Next, if you look at the historical data going back to the 1980s which is available on the linked spreadsheet you’ll see the truly significant fact: The righer are getting a bigger and bigger piece of the national income pie as the years go by. Other than a slight dip due to the dot-com bust in the stock market in 2001 the total share of income for the top ranks of tax filers gets bigger and bigger, and the total inflation-adjusted income for the top skyrockets while the bottom 50% stagnates.</p>

<p>Which leads to: Barron: “Since the wealthy pay most of the taxes, they endure much more of this burden than the average citizen.”-- You must have a significantly different idea of the concept of “enduring a burden” than I do. Paying $100,000 out of a $1,000,000 household income is less of a burden than paying $1,000 out of a $50,000 household income in my opinion. </p>

<p>Final note: This is just income tax, people. It’s one of the few taxes that’s progressive. Social Security tax is regressive. Sales tax is regressive. “User fees” are regressive. On the other hand, estate taxes are progressive. </p>

<p>So which taxes have been going up, and which down? The progressive taxes are being cut, over and over. The regressive taxes are being boosted, year after year. (And for those of you with kids headed for state schools who are seeing double-digit tuition hikes year after year - yea, that’s a regressive form of taxation as well.) Over the past few decades the wealthy have been getting wealthier and paying a smaller percent of their income in taxes, while the poor and middle class are stuck in second gear and facing higher taxes and fees. Based on the current ideological climate I see no rerason to anticipate that changing any time soon.</p>

<p>Welcome to the light, folks.</p>

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<p>My source was <a href=“http://www.irs.gov/taxstats[/url]”>http://www.irs.gov/taxstats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I can’t find that stat on that page. (That’s the main menu page - I can’t figure out which link to go to to get the stat you quote.) I can find it on the irs excell spreadsheet linked from the limbaugh site, though, and from there it’s clear that the increase in the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% over the past 20 years is significantly less than the increase in their share of the total income. That is: the piece of the pie the top 1% enjoys has grown by more than their share of the total taxes paid. I like the chart Limbaugh links to because it covers 1986 through 2001 (why the stats have been frozen since 2001 I don’t know.)
The chart also makes it clear what “top 1%” means - over $300,000 AGI in 2000. And the 50th percentile is below $30,000 - which explains why the “bottom” 50% pay only a tiny share of taxes - the bottom 50% is people who are really poor, plus “filers” like my kids.</p>