Understand, it is not the dividend itself that is evil. The shareholders have, in good faith, invested in an enterprise from which they have a reasonable expectation of seeing a return. It is, in the case of healthcare, the payment of a larger dividend at the cost of not providing necessary treatments and medications to policyholders (who, by the way, are also contributing to maintain that enterprise), that is inherently and irredeemably wrong.
I personally believe that any business whose operation necessitates the exploitation of human lives and human suffering to ensure a profit, has crossed the boundary into evil.
Another place where that boundary is crossed is when the top one percent of our population, who have essentially enjoyed a tax holiday since the Reagan Administration, and the equivalent of an all expenses paid vacation under the most recent Bush Administration, argue that the tax surcharge (which starts at $350,000.00, and is only 5.4% of any income over $1,000,000.00) is class warfare.
You want to see class warfare? Nearly fifty million Americans without any realistic access to healthcare except the ever declining number of emergency rooms; an equal number with healthcare coverage that could charitably be described as "inadequate;" tens of thousands of working Americans losing their healthcare coverage every month as jobs and benefits disappear in the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. That is class warfare, waged by that same top one percent, whether they are aware of it or not, against the bottom ninety percent of all Americans.
To that top one percent I again ask, "How much is enough?"
Some forty years ago, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (someone who would have known) said that regarding personal wealth, anything over $5,000,000.00 was just excess. With the dollar currently at roughly one-seventh of its value then, I would assume that if she were alive today she would put that amount at $35-40,000.000.00.
If we revoked the Bush tax cuts immediately, and added in the healthcare surcharge, the maximum marginal rate (that is the rate charged for every dollar over $1,000,000.00) would only be 45%, some twenty-five points lower than it was when Reagan became President.
Today we have the vast majority of our largest corporations adding little or nothing directly to our nation's tax revenues. When Eisenhower was President, corporate income tax represented 35% of our Federal tax revenues. And yet, these corporate behemoths still enjoy the same benefits (if not more) provided by the Federal government now that they did then.
The taxpayer making $350,000.00 (or more) is already enjoying a 7.65% tax advantage over the majority of Americans on $244,000.00 of his income. That is the money he does not have to pay because of the cap on the FICA payroll tax at roughly $106,000.00. This means he is paying roughly $18,000.00 less in taxes than if the cap were removed. The removal of this cap would probably solve Social Security and Medicare's financial straits for the foreseeable future.
Most Americans do not understand how our marginal progressive income tax works. You take your basic income, after deductions for children, taxes, mortgages, business expenses, etc., and then compare it to a group of values that is your tax liability or bracket.
These brackets are compiled sums of a percentage of your income owed for each level of income that you have achieved. For example (and since I do not have an actual IRS tax table to work from, this is purely hypothetical) you might be required to pay 10% of your income after your exemptions and deductions (which I shall simply combine under the term "deductions," for the sake of brevity) for any income up to $10,000.00. In other words, if you are a single taxpayer making $18,000.00 per year, and you take only the standard deduction that all taxpayers receive of $9,000.00, you would owe $900.00 in taxes for the year.
If you make $32,000.00 under this hypothetical system, you might be required to pay 15% of your income on any income between $10,000.00 and $35,000.00 per year after deductions, you would owe $2950.00 in taxes for that year ($32,000.00-9,000.00=$23,000.00, first $10,000.00 at a 10% tax liability equals $1000.00 tax owed; $23,000.00-10,000.00=$13,0000.00 at a 15% tax liability equals $1950.00 tax owed; $1000.00+1950.00=$2950.00 total tax owed). If you have dependents, business expenses and improvements, a mortgage, etc.; that you can itemize on your return, rather than take the standard deduction, and reduce your tax liability even further.
I would like to note here that under the House of Representatives' healthcare reformbill that Congressman Jared Polis (Colorado Second District) is so upset about (H.B. 3200), the four percent of the small business owners who might be liable for the healthcare surtax on their profits over $350,000.00 can reduce their tax exposure by hiring additional employees, or investing in business improvements.
Now we have the last two pieces of our individual income/government funding puzzle: the capital gains and estate taxes.
Capital gains are those you supposedly realize on long term investments: real estate (including extraction of minerals), government and corporate bonds, common and preferred stock.
Corporations only receive money from the sale of their stock at the time of the initial stock offering. They only benefit from the increase in the price of their stock if they: offer additional stock for sale; use the stock that they retain as collateral for loans; or use it as leverage to buy other businesses. Once a share of stock has been sold to its initial investor, it is of no further direct value to its corporation, and is merely the stakes of what is little more than a complex game of chance.
