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The Truth About Taxes |
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Have you heard about the so-called “tea parties” happening today? Honchos of the extremist right are orchestrating top-down events to protest paying taxes for a proposed federal budget that’s designed to stimulate the nation’s flattened economy and support basic infrastructure and public services. Ironies abound in these protests: In some areas, protestors are urged to take public transportation to the events. Key word here is “public,” as in paid for by taxpayers.
The media talking heads pushing these events are spewing a lot of venom toward a presidential administration they can’t control, one not beholden to special corporate interests. In doing so, their rhetoric is bordering on the treasonous: Fox’s Glenn Beck, who’s holding a $500-plate fundraiser for the San Antonio tea party, has begun advocating secession. (Hat tip to Media Matters for this and all its great work.)
So now’s a good time to set the record straight on taxes. Since 1980, taxes on the wealthy have gone down while income inequality has gone up by 144 percent, according to a report by the Institute for America’s Future.
Not only are the rich paying less—they’re not paying. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’ investigative watchdog, has found that “a majority of America’s largest publicly traded companies and the U.S. government’s largest federal contractors use multiple subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to conduct business and avoid paying U.S. taxes.” The corporate tax-haven list includes Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Caterpillar, Cisco, ConocoPhillips, Dell, Dow Chemical Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., FedEx, General Motors Corp., Kraft Foods, Merck, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which tallied a whopping 782 foreign subsidiaries in 14 countries.
That’s Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, the instigator and biggest promoter of the “tea parties.”
Maybe what’s really behind the Murdoch-Fox fueled tea party events is a major new initiative by the Obama administration in which the IRS is asking people concealing assets and taxable income in secret offshore bank accounts to turn themselves in voluntarily over the next six months, pay what they owe and answer questions they may be asked about who helped them set up the secret accounts. Or maybe it’s the administration’s efforts to get tough on overseas profits by boosting taxes paid by corporate job outsourcers.
If so, Fox’s faux populism has turned tax day into April Fool’s Day.
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If the top 5% pay 95% of the taxes what is wrong with them getting a bigger tax break than the rest? They pay more dollars in than tax than the rest. If the Government is suppose to grow the economy than why haven’t it ever worked in world history? The top 1 percent of taxpayers — those with adjusted gross income of at least $267,000 in 2004 — paid more than 25 percent of all federal taxes that year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That was up from 15 percent in 1979.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/business/31leonhardt.html
http://snipurl.com/fz10e
So the numbers can be manipulated by what ever numbers you choose to use.
But I really doubt that you can find a fellow union member that has gone and got a job from some person on a street corner asking for hand-outs.
and I doubt you’ll find a rich person that got there by doing all the work for him or herself. Even in the most rags to riches story (which is by far the exception rather than the rule), that person who became rich got there because of other people’s labors.
one set of numbers that can’t be manipulated no matter how you look at it are real wage and income growth over the past 30+ years, and income/wealth distribution. Worker productivity has continued to climb while the profits went to the top. That is why they can pay a lower marginal tax rate yet still make up an increasing share of total tax revenues.
Tax rates are not the cause of the problem. They are a result. As the rich become richer relative to the rest of us, their power to influence tax policy grows. Thus, we get tax policy that favors them and further feeds the income inequality.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich busts a lot of myths about taxes here:
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/04/short-citizens-guide-to-kooks.html
Including:
“The rich pay too much! The top ten percent of income earners pay over 72 percent of all income taxes!” Misleading: The main reason the rich pay such a large percent is they’ve become so much richer than the bottom 90 percent in recent years. If you look at what they pay as individuals — the percent of their incomes over and above the highest rate below them — you’ll see a steady decline over the years. When Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president, the marginal rate on the highest earners was 91 percent (after deductions and tax credits, closer to 50 percent); by 1980 it was still up there, at 70 percent (an effective rate of closer to 45 percent); under Bill Clinton, it was 38 percent (an effective rate closer to 28 percent).
Protesters can blame the Democrats or the Republicans both are guilty of what is happening in this country.Until they start thinking Independent and start voting these fools out nothing is going to change.They do not care what we want and they have not for a very long time.Instead of protesting our tax system although it needs it we should be advocating term limits.
One has to love the tea-bag protesters for they are demonstrating against a Republican president’s tax policy passed by a Republican congress. I wonder if those doing the tea party understand this.
The way I look at this: none care if folks get rich if the playing field to achieve wealth is fair. It has not been fair in my lifetime and I am an old man. I made a choice many moons ago to do the “labor” thing for I wished a piece of the pie if you would. I find that forces have nibbled away at my slice of that pie and nibbled it next to nothing. I have seen varied safety nets for the public made useless for most, on and on.
In fact, the tax rate for the top is too low and needs reformed. The rules to achieve wealth need reformed to insure fairness and that of course includes the tax code.
The income tax is illegal. Watch http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5355374476580235299 and http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2208477968446177859 . The federal reserve (a privately owned corporation that doesn’t list its owners) was uncontitutionally (article 1,section8,10) given the power to create money from thin air-then loan it to the government and citizens thru banks (fractional reserve banking) has 100% of your illegally collected tax dollars taken as “interest” on the national debt (http://www.uhuh.com/taxstuff/gracecom.htm) as found out by the grace commission (Raegan-84).
Only in America! Yesterday, on my way to my good union job, I saw a group of “Tea Party” protesters lining the pristine taxpayer-funded boulevard. Spontaneous? Nope. That event was “planned and fanned” for months before by some of the same folks who are threatened by pending pro-worker legislation such as the Employee Free Choice Act. My neighbor had been talking about it for months, as if it were some truly revolutionary event and not a right-wing publicity stunt.
This morning he was a little disheartened at how it shook out after all his hard work. There were all kinds of flag-waving patriots out there, not only tax-protesters—but lots of issues were crowding the venue. Oh, well. That’s the price of free speech—everybody gets to exercise it. People have a tendency to attach their agendas to free publicity, so out came the anti-immigration, anti-abortion,anti-worker, anti-government and whatever other fringe with their signs and their flags.
We all know that taxes are the price we pay for living in our communities. We don’t all agree about how they should be spent beyond public safety,infrastructure, and the greater good. But I know when I’m being manipulated into pushing someone else’s agenda. My neighbor says that the other people’s issues clouded the message of taxation without representation—but we live in Rep. David Dreier’s district, and he voted for him! Go figure.
As I was driving down the road listening to some old Chet Baker I saw a commotion in the distance. As I drew nearer I discovered that the commotion was really a teabag party.
Flags were flying. Kids not old enough to pay taxes were waving “I Hate Taxes” placards. An old farmer in coveralls purchased with money from his farm subsidy had a sign reading “Say No To Obama Tax”. A mom in a mini-van pulled up, got out, and shouted, “Ya-hooooo”! Cheap, made-in-China junk in a Wal-Mart bag nearly fell from the driver’s side.
As a peered left and right I discovered that the large majority of party-goers were nicely attired, probably between the ages of 15 and 35, and white as snow.
Feeling inquisitive, I decided to ask what was going on. One of the few men there said they were protesting the Obama/Democrat tax increase.
When I remarked how lucky he was to be wealthy he shouted, “Hell, I’m not wealthy. I only made $40,000 last year.
I explained to him that under the President’s tax plan, only rich people would see a tax increase, and thus my comment about his good luck. Then I told him that he would receive a tax cut. He looked dumbfounded. I went on to explain that his tax protest was a year late; that here in 2009 he was out protesting taxes imposed on him in 2008, long before our new President took office.
Undaunted, he continued his harangue against the new administration. He was doing nothing more than exhibiting the DNA of America – Do Not Admit. Do not admit error. He went on to say that a tax increase is a tax increase. Why should the rich have to pay more?
Sadly, such sentiments have been propagandized into the minds of everyday Americans. Although many lack health insurance because it is too costly, and some are on the brink of losing their homes, and the money they still owe on their cars is more than what the car is worth, they nonetheless defend Daddy Warbucks and his ilk instead of looking out for themselves and their neighbors.
Perhaps a different brand of tea will slow them down enough to stop, look, listen, and learn.
They sure as heck need something. The billseanglennrush variety is making them ignorant.
Do not forget, the rich GOT RICH of of the working class people of this country. The RICH forgot how it is to work a 8 or an even 12 hr day. The working people of this country built this country from the bottom up.
The reason the corporations are fighting the EFCA is they DO NOT want to give up their power they have over the workers, their wages and safety on the job.
TO ALL: PLEASE DO NOT FORGET THE UNIONS ARE WHAT GAVE US THE 40 HOUR WORK WEEK AND MINIMUM WAGE.
To suggest ExxonMobil is not paying taxes is to say the least inaccurate. As an ExxonMobil employee that has some involvement in reporting our financial status I think it is important that we deal in facts not assertions - and the fact is that in 2008 we incurred more than $116 billion in taxes. Moreover for every dollar we earned, we contributed two and a half dollars in taxes that governments use to provide schools, roads, hospitals and other essential services. In the US alone, our total tax expenses over the last five years were $68 billion, exceeding our U.S. earnings during that period by almost $20 billion. And our effective tax rate currently is 45%. If you would like to read the detail you can go to http://ir.exxonmobil.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=115024&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2NjYm4uMTBrd2l6YXJkLmNvbS94bWwvZmlsaW5nLnhtbD9yZXBvPXRlbmsmaXBhZ2U9NjE3MTYxMiZkb2M9MSZudW09OTE%3d