The Top 10% of income earners paid 71% of federal income tax

Originally posted by ImaFungi
Corporations not having to pay taxes is kind of weird,, considering the reason they exist and are able to profit is because of the consuming population.. If the corporations are considered people, why would they not be taxed on their income to support themselves and their fellow citizens?

They do have to pay taxes, but they find loopholes. So the money you give them is not taxed, in many cases most of it comes from Europe, thank god. But still, thats tax money not being payed that has to come from somewhere.

The arguement seems a bit misleading.


If I make $10,000 and have to pay 10% in taxes, that's $1,000.

If GE or Exxon makes $1 Billion and has to pay only 1% in taxes, that's $10,000,000.

But, if the total debt to be paid by both the corportations and me is, say, $300 million, GE or Exxon could cry that they are paying the "bulk" of the debt, and I'm getting off cheap.

Even though I'm paying a vastly higher Percentage of my income to taxes, and they are merely pay more in in terms of the total tax amount paid.


Guess we can thank our nation's general "number illiteracy" for the effectiveness of the implied arguement.

"Math is haaard!" Barbie

I'm for all families and small businesses paying a lower, more reasonable tax rate. Now Obama calls for reducing corporate tax rate to 28%. Don't misunderstand me, I am not blaming Obama or Democrats. I think it would be the same if we have a Republican president. I think American politics is owned by big corporations and until there is a way to get corporate money out of politics this is the lousy system we are stuck with. I don't have a problem with helping big corporations that keep jobs in America if they would actually pay some tax!

Just another example of the real problem:

seattletimes.nwsource.com...

I paid a good chunk of money last year, about 31k in federal taxes. I'm not bitching about it, but I need to ask a question... how much should it cost to be an American? For some it cost a lot for others it cost nothing...not sure if this is fair either.

I'm for a flat or fair tax system than the huge and cumbersome tax system we have now, but class warfare is a propaganda ploy of the left to get votes. They demonize the upper 10%ers as if they do not pay their fair share, while offering the lower 50%er promises they can never pay for.

Originally posted by buster2010
The people saying they don't pay their share is right. Everyone should be paying the same percentage in taxes. Everyone that cries they pay too much just looks at amounts never percent of income.

Wow, the ignorance expressed on the first page of this thread is staggering, but this comment deserves a special award for complete and utter cluelessness. The upper 10% of wage earners pay a HIGHER percentage of their income in taxes than anyone else. How do I know? Because I am one, and believe me when I say that the government exacts its pound of flesh from me each and every year without fail. You people seem to think that the upper 10% of wage earners in this country are free-wheeling gazillionaires, but you're totally wrong. Many of you may be in the upper 10% and not even know it. Here's a chart showing the yearly income it takes to land your family in a certain bracket:

Top 1%: $380,354
Top 5%: $159,619
Top 10%: $113,799
Top 25%: $67,280
Top 50%: >$33,048

Source

And here are the tax rates these brackets pay out (from the above link):

Top 1%........23.3%
Top 5%........20.7%
Top 10%......18.7%
Top 25%......15.7%
Top 50%......13.6%
Bottom 50%...2.6%

Now I would dearly love to pay 2.6% in taxes, that would actually leave me with some money that I could buy things with. But no, between college costs for my kids, ongoing bills, and the constant fleecing we "rich people" receive at the whims of the government I'm left with barely enough extra to set aside for a future retirement that I'll probably never be able to afford.

I promise you all, most of the top 10% of wage earners in this country are not "rich" by any stretch of the imagination. I drive a car with 110k miles on it, live in a modest home and in general am quite frugal. But despite that I am not sitting on bags of money. On the contrary, I just barely make ends meet month-to-month. The big bags of money go out of my account and into the government coffers.

Originally posted by Bhadhidar
The arguement seems a bit misleading.


If I make $10,000 and have to pay 10% in taxes, that's $1,000.

If GE or Exxon makes $1 Billion and has to pay only 1% in taxes, that's $10,000,000.

But, if the total debt to be paid by both the corportations and me is, say, $300 million, GE or Exxon could cry that they are paying the "bulk" of the debt, and I'm getting off cheap.

Even though I'm paying a vastly higher Percentage of my income to taxes, and they are merely pay more in in terms of the total tax amount paid.


Guess we can thank our nation's general "number illiteracy" for the effectiveness of the implied arguement.

"Math is haaard!" Barbie

Math is great....

If I'm low income I pay nothing, middle about 12% upper 20 to 35% of a much larger pool of money. Lets see 12% of 50k compared to 35% of 500k....

I think I also read that America has the highest business tax in the world.... It's not about how much tax you can generate it's about how much you need to spend, and Obama has not figured that out yet....

Originally posted by MightyQuincunx
Sourced from the IRS??? Now that's reputable ::laughs:: I just found out that the government has never lied to us about anything. Source: The Easter Bunny & The Tooth Fairy

edit on 21-2-2012 by MightyQuincunx because: I needed to add one more reputable source.

yeah, we'll take the word of a college dropout at an Occupy rally instead, right? After all, that Occupy good is much more reputable.

Maybe, maybe not. How much does the 10% earn? you have not given enough data to reach the conclusion.

-rrr

Originally posted by SavedOne

Originally posted by buster2010
The people saying they don't pay their share is right. Everyone should be paying the same percentage in taxes. Everyone that cries they pay too much just looks at amounts never percent of income.

Wow, the ignorance expressed on the first page of this thread is staggering, but this comment deserves a special award for complete and utter cluelessness. The upper 10% of wage earners pay a HIGHER percentage of their income in taxes than anyone else. How do I know? Because I am one, and believe me when I say that the government exacts its pound of flesh from me each and every year without fail. You people seem to think that the upper 10% of wage earners in this country are free-wheeling gazillionaires, but you're totally wrong. Many of you may be in the upper 10% and not even know it. Here's a chart showing the yearly income it takes to land your family in a certain bracket:

Top 1%: $380,354
Top 5%: $159,619
Top 10%: $113,799
Top 25%: $67,280
Top 50%: >$33,048

Source

And here are the tax rates these brackets pay out (from the above link):

Top 1%........23.3%
Top 5%........20.7%
Top 10%......18.7%
Top 25%......15.7%
Top 50%......13.6%
Bottom 50%...2.6%

Now I would dearly love to pay 2.6% in taxes, that would actually leave me with some money that I could buy things with. But no, between college costs for my kids, ongoing bills, and the constant fleecing we "rich people" receive at the whims of the government I'm left with barely enough extra to set aside for a future retirement that I'll probably never be able to afford.

I promise you all, most of the top 10% of wage earners in this country are not "rich" by any stretch of the imagination. I drive a car with 110k miles on it, live in a modest home and in general am quite frugal. But despite that I am not sitting on bags of money. On the contrary, I just barely make ends meet month-to-month. The big bags of money go out of my account and into the government coffers.

edit on 22-2-2012 by SavedOne because: (no reason given)

You have actually provided enough data to reach a conclusion. One can create different divisions and animosity between people by carefully selecting the cuttoff point. With 10% I have to agree with you, those immediately within the 10% (that is between say 5% and 10% are paying what seems like a reasonable scaling of taxes. But those in the 1% make about 3 times as much and stay in about the same bracket. I assure you that the top 1% is not struggling to sends their kids to college like you and I are.

Originally posted by SavedOne

Originally posted by buster2010
The people saying they don't pay their share is right. Everyone should be paying the same percentage in taxes. Everyone that cries they pay too much just looks at amounts never percent of income.

Wow, the ignorance expressed on the first page of this thread is staggering, but this comment deserves a special award for complete and utter cluelessness. The upper 10% of wage earners pay a HIGHER percentage of their income in taxes than anyone else. How do I know? Because I am one, and believe me when I say that the government exacts its pound of flesh from me each and every year without fail. You people seem to think that the upper 10% of wage earners in this country are free-wheeling gazillionaires, but you're totally wrong. Many of you may be in the upper 10% and not even know it. Here's a chart showing the yearly income it takes to land your family in a certain bracket:

Top 1%: $380,354
Top 5%: $159,619
Top 10%: $113,799
Top 25%: $67,280
Top 50%: >$33,048

Source

And here are the tax rates these brackets pay out (from the above link):

Top 1%........23.3%
Top 5%........20.7%
Top 10%......18.7%
Top 25%......15.7%
Top 50%......13.6%
Bottom 50%...2.6%

Now I would dearly love to pay 2.6% in taxes, that would actually leave me with some money that I could buy things with. But no, between college costs for my kids, ongoing bills, and the constant fleecing we "rich people" receive at the whims of the government I'm left with barely enough extra to set aside for a future retirement that I'll probably never be able to afford.

I promise you all, most of the top 10% of wage earners in this country are not "rich" by any stretch of the imagination. I drive a car with 110k miles on it, live in a modest home and in general am quite frugal. But despite that I am not sitting on bags of money. On the contrary, I just barely make ends meet month-to-month. The big bags of money go out of my account and into the government coffers.

edit on 22-2-2012 by SavedOne because: (no reason given)

Great post!

Now we all know what constitutes a member of the richest 1%.

Anyone making over $380,000 a year.

Seek the truth: Go to ATS.
--------
What most people don't understand is that tax the rich eventually turns into tax everyone.

There are not enough rich people to make a difference.

Another way to look at it: Tax the rich = Attack the capitalists

---------
Obama is a socialist.

James Carville revealed the obvious during the BP oil spill.

The top 10% are NOT the 1%.
I know that's a mathematic flub.
Maybe we should say the bottom 30% to 98%
pay the lions share of taxes.

It's a little misleading because of how large the gap is between
the top 1% and 9% below them. Its a BIG DIFFERENCE.

And as a member pointed out in an above post,
The top 10% excluding the top 2% are not rich like the top 2%.
It's that tippy top that gets away with murder

Romney admittedly pays 15% in taxes .
Did y'all get that?
15 mf'n %.

So it may say he's supposed to pay 23%
But NONE in that bracket do.

Originally posted by sealing
The top 10% are NOT the 1%.
I know that's a mathematic flub.
Maybe we should say the bottom 30% to 98%
pay the lions share of taxes.

It's a little misleading because of how large the gap is between
the top 1% and 9% below them. Its a BIG DIFFERENCE.

And as a member pointed out in an above post,
The top 10% excluding the top 2% are not rich like the top 2%.
It's that tippy top that gets away with murder

Romney admittedly pays 15% in taxes .
Did y'all get that?
15 mf'n %.

That's because Mitt Romney has already earned his money and invested it. See???
--------
Another way to look at it is that Romney is being taxed twice.



Look at it this way. Make a mountain of cash. Retire.

Throw all of it in the US Stock Market. Buy stock in Verizon - VZ -

Earn 5% dividend and pay capital gains tax on it.

Seek the truth.

reply to post by Eurisko2012


Haha! That is brilliant Eurisko !
I think you've got it figured out.

Maybe it's people that have perfectly manicured
hands that should be taxed at 50%.
I could go for that. My hands are beat to hell
and full of calluses, since I actually create things.
"They" live in the world of the intangible.

Unplug their computers and they
have nothing to show for it.

reply to post by rickyrrr


140 million returns with 4 million of over 250k in income, 235,000 returns of over 1 million in income, 8,000 with over 10 million.

The top 235,000 who earned 1 million or more made around 735 billion gross, with about 1,000 of them paying no tax, with a total of 79 million returns paying no income tax.

97% of returns were under 200k in income.


I guess the big question is why they didn't pay, but it is hard to figureout where the blame should sit.

The other big question is if they ALL paid 20% would 140 billion really be much more than a drop in the 5 trillion Obama bucket?

Forgive me if this has been covered (I'm on page 9 and haven't seen my question) or is just a stupid question but, I don't see this chart anywhere on IRS.gov. The link on the American Heritage Foundation's site goes to a blank page on it's own site. So my question is, are there any other sources to support the claim of 10% paying 71% of the federal income tax?

ETA and even still the chart only covers up until 2006?

Originally posted by Kali74
Forgive me if this has been covered (I'm on page 9 and haven't seen my question) or is just a stupid question but, I don't see this chart anywhere on IRS.gov. The link on the American Heritage Foundation's site goes to a blank page on it's own site. So my question is, are there any other sources to support the claim of 10% paying 71% of the federal income tax?

ETA and even still the chart only covers up until 2006?

edit on 22-2-2012 by Kali74 because: (no reason given)

Simple math is all it is......

reply to post by Xtrozero


Math based on what though? Where are the numbers coming from for the maths we're engaging in?

reply to post by Skyfloating


This just shows that more money is in the hands of the rich than ever before in history.

reply to post by SavedOne


The top 10% are not rich? They struggle? I think you are pulling my leg.