" Bruce
Bartlett and Kevin Drum
point to a striking table in the 2012 Economic Report of the President pdf
showing that there's a huge variation in what people of similar income levels
actually pay in federal taxes:
Those in the middle-income
quintile, for instance, can pay anywhere between 1.7 percent and 23.5 percent
of their income in federal taxes. About a quarter of the wealthiest Americans,
meanwhile, have a lower average tax rate (17.4 percent) than many of those in
making far less money.
What explains the wild
variation? Part of it is that some Americans -- Mitt Romney is the most famous
example -- get a sizeable chunk of their income from capital gains, taxed at a lower rate than salaries. There
are also a variety of deductions and credits in the tax code that only certain
people either can or do take advantage of.
Bruce Bartlett comments
that the tax code has become misaligned with basic fairness principles: "We can
see, then, that the tax system in the United States violates the fundamental
principles of income taxation."
No surprise here, as
we have never watched the Republicans CUT the taxes of the richest Americans.
Americans For
Financial Reform is trying to make the tax issue into a political controversy
without much help from our tepid and complicit media, writing:
"With tax Day just
around the corner, and so many Americans struggling to make ends meet, we can't
help but notice that Wall Street is still not paying their fair share.
Yesterday, we sent out
a press release announcing that prominent bankers now supported a financial
speculation tax. Of course, that was an April fools joke. They don't. And they
won't. Which is why its so important for all of us to take action.
This April, send
a message to President Obama, It's Time to
Tax Wall Street.
They add: "A small tax
on financial transactions has the potential to raise significant revenue and
simultaneously limit reckless short-term speculation that can threaten
financial stability. We are writing to ask you to support such a tax for the
United States. We are also asking that you put an end any Treasury Department
opposition to the implementation of the tax in Europe. Many European countries
are moving ahead with this idea, and so should the United States."
The Democrats are
legitimately attacking Republican Paul Ryan's "budget" which will insure more
tax breaks for the rich while at the same time backing a law that undercuts
financial regulation, as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains:
"And then there's the "Jumpstart Our Business Startups" or "JOBS" Act, which President Obama is expected to sign into law Thursday. It allows so-called "crowd funding" by which people whose net worth is less than $100,000 can gamble away (invest) up to 5 percent of their annual incomes in any get- rich-quick scam (start-up) that any huckster (entrepreneur) may sell them.
Forget the usual investor
disclosures or other protections. In the interest of "streamlining,"
Congress has streamlined the way to fraud. Although start-ups will have to
market themselves through third-party portals approved by the Securities and
Exchange Commission, this is like limiting Bernie Madoff to making pitches over
the radio. The SEC can barely keep track of Wall Street let alone thousands of
Internet portals. Small wonder SEC Chair Mary Schapiro has been one of most
outspoken critics of bill.
The bill was sold to Congress as a way to promote jobs (note the acronym) on the supposition that small start-ups create huge numbers of them. Wrong. That assumption comes from research by the Kauffman Foundation, which counted as a "start-up job" every laid-off worker who morphed into an independent contractor."
This may be the year
for OWS to consider Occupying the IRS, or at least finding a dramatic way of
challenging the lack of fairness in our tax codes as well as the "priorities"
the tax money currently funds including wars and subsidies for those that don't
need them
You don't have to
be, or have, an accountant to know
the score.
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