<p>As most people do not have to pay an inheritance tax it is not really a special tax break. It just gives higher worth people the same tax as those with less wealth. This is a tax that impacts only a very small group so I would call it a discriminatory tax. Either tax everyone or no one.</p>
<p>So, tax everyone, that is a concept…too bad those that are taxed don’t pay their fair share</p>
<p>But barrons, I thought your pundits said that the estate tax hurts ALOT of people, which is it?</p>
<p>The wealthy aren’t exempt from paying taxes. Not sure where you folks get your information. In fact they’re the ones who are financially propping up our federal government. </p>
<p>The data from tax year 2003 (the year most recently released by the IRS) shows that the top 1% of taxpayers paid 34.3% of all federal income taxes. Read that again: the top 1% pay 34.3% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% paid 54.4%, the top 10% paid 65.8 %, and the top 25% paid 83.9%! Translated another way - 75% of taxpayers paid only 16.1% of all federal income tax.</p>
<p>Fairness is obviously in the eye of the beholder.</p>
<p>And 75% of those payers, how many are in poverty,
how many are retired,
how many are college students</p>
<p>if you gonna give us #s, give us #s, </p>
<p>How many are on minimum, wage and make less than 25000 a year
How many have lots of kids
How many work two-three jobs and still just make it
How many are self-employed
How many are un-employed
How many are disabled
How many are on the street
How many?</p>
<p>Your facts while, may be statistically accurate, do not tell the whole story</p>
<p>Its as if you mixed on kind of # with another</p>
<p>Your translation is not really a fair way to represent what is going on</p>
<p>but I think you know that</p>
<p>Sorry you don’t think that presenting facts is fair. The top 1% pay 34.3% and the top 5% pay over half of federal income taxes. Wow.</p>
<p>On another matter data was released last week that showed federal revenues surged once again in the first three quarters of the current fiscal year. Corporate tax receipts are up more than 26% over the same period last year. Individual income tax collections are up over 14% over the first nine months of fiscal 2005. It’s astounding how successful the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts have been at raising federal revenue.</p>
<p>OK, Browninfall, follow this carefully: the top percentiles pay more income tax because they receive a larger share of the income. The “take home” after income tax and FICA (A big part of which is, as you put it “propping up” the federal budget) for all taxpayers who earn over $40,000 is about 75%. That’s true of those who earn $40,000 per year; it’s true of the top 1% who earn an average of $880,000 per year. About 25% comes off the top to pay for part of the Federal government budget - and it a big extra chunk is run up on our kid’s credit to cover the rest.</p>
<p>Since 1985 the economic “piece of the pie” that the top 1% of all taxpayers get has increased by 67%. The piece that the bottom 50 % get has shrunk by 20%. The inflation adjusted income of the bottom 50% of taxpayers hasn’t budged in 25 years. The inflation-adjusted income of the top 1% has increased by 60%, while their tax rate has declined by 15%. The income + FICA tax rates of the “bottom” 90% are unchanged.</p>
<p>Those are facts.</p>
<p>If you take the time to actually look at the IRS spreadsheet linked to from the Rush Limbaugh site instead of just accepting the gasbag’s propaganda about what they show, that’s what you’ll find out. I know it’s not the propaganda you’ve had drilled into your head, I know it’s not “comfortable” to confront that reality - but that’s reality.</p>
<p>
They <em>receive</em> it, eh. How does one go about receiving such things? Im interested. Could I simply start recieving it too? Sounds great.</p>
<p>Okay, Barrons: a primer on estate tax. Most heirs don’t have to worry about estate tax because there’s no estate to speak of. When there is an estate of a size worth taxing it’s generally the result of a large amount of capital assets which have grown, untaxed, through the lifetime of the decedent. </p>
<p>Let’s use the Hilton family as an example. Conrad Hilton founds a hotel chain. He owns it. His income from the chain is taxed, but a bigger part of his wealth comes from the fact that the hotels increase in value over time. That increase in wealth isn’t taxed every year, though - it only is taxed when and if he sells those capital assets, at which time he pays a (discounted) tax on the difference between the price he paid for them and what he sold them for (simplified explanation.) </p>
<p>But (usually) Conrad dies without selling his capiital assets, leaving them to his son Barron (No relation, I assume?). Guess what happens then? All of those assets are revalued at their current value. That increase in wealth goes completely untaxed. Barron could cash them in then and pay no capital gains tax at all. If you don’t have an estate tax you’ve created a mechanism whereby anyone with enough wealth to amass a large amount of capital assets can see their wealth increase, generation after generation, without ever paying any taxes on that increase in wealth - unlike the “little people” who have to pay income and FICA tax on every additional bit of wealth they acquire. But if you’re wealthy enough, you don’t have to sell your capital assets - you let them continue to increase in value, and leave them to your heirs. And so when Barron dies, Paris and her siblings get to share a few hundred million bucks which the government has scrupulously avoided taxing through three generations - unless we have an estate tax. </p>
<p>And you say that a tax which captures a part of that increase in wealth is “discriminatory”. All I can say is that the wealthy (understandably) have a much better propaganda delivery system than the rest of us - they certainly got you!</p>
<p>FountainSiren, for the most part, the largest source of income for the top 1% of American taxpayers is passive income from inherited wealth. You want to receive some of that? Ask your parents if they’re rich. If not - sorry!</p>
<p>Im interested. Could I simply start recieving it too? Sounds great.
I expect my H would be interested too- as it is , he comes home so exhausted from work that it is all he can to do to eat dinner and go to bed.
Since according to social security records he is only making $20,000 more than he did 30 years ago, I imagine he would like to see a little more pay off for his hard work</p>
<p>I know how the capital gains laws work. It is the same for everyone.
CGM as usual I don’t agree with everything anyone says–even the Republicans. It’s marketing which often is bending the truth to emphasize the parts that fit your position. Dems do it too. </p>
<p>kluge, sounds like they are being taxed on that wealth to me if they are paying so much on “passive income”…</p>
<p>thank you Kluge, you explained what i was trying to get browninfall to look at</p>
<p>If the top percentages have the most money, yes they will pay the most taxes…</p>
<p>And if the bottom 75% pay the least, isn’t it interesting that such a HUGE percentage of the country has such a low income that they COMBINED don’t match the income of the top few</p>
<p>Now, that is truely sad</p>
<p>
Almost as good as “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” But I suspect that Anatole France appreciated the irony, whereas I suspect you might have juuuust missed it. </p>
<p>And since you know how capital gains work, I figure you must understand that the taxable passive income received by the holders of great wealth are the rents and dividends which are a sideline to the main event, which is not taxed. If you hold an asset which generates 5% of income and appreciates at 5% per year you are building wealth at the rate of 10% per year, but you’re only paying taxes on half of it. Everyone who invests in real estate understands how it works.</p>
<p>CGM, what’s truly said is that the HUGE percentage of the country is so envious and jealous of the top %s that they want to steal money from them.</p>
<p>Well, neverborn, they must be doing a pretty poor job, since the wealthiest % of the country has significantly increased its share of the national wealth for the past 25 years, at the expense of everyone else. Who is “stealing” from whom?</p>
<p>The wealthy aren’t pointing guns at the poor. The government is pointing guns at the wealthy in the form of taxation.</p>
<p>National wealth cannot be ‘shared’. Someone slept through economics 101.</p>
<p>“at the expense of everyone else”</p>
<p>This term needs a definition. If someone gets a biger piece of pie than they had before is it automatically at the expense of the other pie eaters? What if the pie became larger and everyone got a bigger piece?</p>
<p>^ From the early twentieth century to the modern day, thats exactly what happened. Income generally went up for everyone.</p>
<p>I love the good capitalist philosophy of the ever expanding pie.</p>
<p>Tell that to the po’ folks in the US. Their slice is shrinking.</p>