DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... 400 richest Americans:122 paid less than 15% in fed income taxes; 6 paid $0

On the face of it, Senator Harry Reid’s explosive but flimsily sourced claim that Mitt Romney paid no income tax seems preposterous. Mr. Romney has denied it, and without his returns no one can say for sure. But for someone who makes millions of dollars a year, would it even be possible?
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The I.R.S. disclosed that six of the 400 people in the country with the highest gross income paid no federal income tax at all.
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The Top 400: Lower Taxes and More Capital Gains and Dividends
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Evidently it is.

It so happens that this summer the Internal Revenue Service released data from the 400 individual income tax returns reporting the highest adjusted gross income. This elite ultrarich group earned on average $202 million in 2009, the latest year available. And buried in the data is the startling disclosure that six of the 400 paid no federal income tax.

The I.R.S. has never before disclosed that last fact.

Not even Mr. Romney, with reported 2010 income of $21.7 million, qualifies for membership in this select group of 400. But the data provides a window into the financial lives and tax rates of the superrich. Since the I.R.S. doesn’t release data for the tiny percentage of Americans at Mr. Romney’s income level, the 400 are the closest proxy.

And that data demonstrates that many of the ultrarich can and do reduce their tax liability to very low levels, even zero. Besides the six who paid no federal income tax, the I.R.S. reported that 27 paid from zero to 10 percent of their adjusted gross incomes and another 89 paid between 10 and 15 percent, which is close to the 13.9 percent rate that Mr. Romney disclosed that he paid in 2010. (At the other end of the spectrum, 82 paid 30 to 35 percent. None paid more than 35 percent.) So more than a quarter of the people earning an average of over $200 million in 2009 paid less than 15 percent of their adjusted gross income in taxes.

How do they do it?

The data show that the ultrarich typically pay low tax rates every year, but 2009 was a special case. In 2008, people with large stock portfolios and other less liquid assets were disproportionately hit with large losses on paper. One of the oddities of the tax code is that capital gains taxes are discretionary, since they must be paid only when gains are realized. And they can be offset by losses. The silver lining in a bad year like 2008 for wealthy people is that they can “harvest” losses by selling assets, then use those losses to offset any gains. They can also carry forward the losses to offset gains in future years.

There’s ample evidence that happened in 2009 among the richest taxpayers. Their average income, $202 million, dropped from $270 million in 2008 and was the lowest since 2004. Like Mr. Romney in 2010, for the richest taxpayers most income comes from capital gains and other investment income. Their net capital gains (the data doesn’t include gross gains and losses) dropped by nearly 40 percent, from an average of $154 million in 2008 to $93 million in 2009, which accounts for nearly all of their drop in total income. Even with these lower gains, these 400 taxpayers, a minuscule fraction of the population at large, still managed to account for 16 percent of all capital gains. That is the highest percentage since the data was first released for 1992, when that percentage was less than 6 percent.

Tax experts I consulted said these results almost certainly reflected aggressive use of tax-loss carry-forwards from 2008, since the stock market bottomed in March 2009 and rallied strongly during the rest of the year.

The superrich also accounted for a disproportionate amount of dividend income, which averaged over $26 million for the top 400, or over 6 percent of total dividend income, also a record. Capital gains and dividends are both taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent, as opposed to the maximum rate on earned income of 35 percent, which helps explain why so many of the superrich pay a relatively low rate. Still, that preferential rate doesn’t get them anywhere near zero, or even 10 percent.

Edward Kleinbard, professor of law at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, explained it this way, “You start with income dominated by tax-preferred income — capital gains and qualified dividends. That gets you to 15 percent. Then you use charitable contributions of appreciated securities to reduce ordinary income. But the charitable contribution deduction is capped at 50 percent of adjusted gross income. Now you’re way down, but you’re not at zero.”

What does it take to get to zero, or close to it? According to Professor Kleinbard, there are only two additional ways: tax loss carry-forwards to offset capital gains, and tax shelters, many of which have been deemed abusive by the I.R.S., to offset any remaining ordinary income after other deductions.

(Other possibilities are the foreign tax credit and general business credit, but total tax credits averaged only $2.4 million for the top 400, and neither would seem to be of much benefit to Mr. Romney.)

Since Mr. Romney seems to have had relatively little ordinary income since leaving Bain Capital, he may have been able to get to a very low rate in 2009 using tax loss carry-forwards from 2008 to offset capital gains and charitable contributions to offset up to 50 percent of his ordinary income. Without access to the returns, it’s impossible to know whether he would also have needed some additional form of tax shelter, aggressive or otherwise, to get even lower, or even to zero.

Mr. Romney has been taken to task for an abusive tax shelter used by Marriott International in 1994 while Mr. Romney was on the board and audit committee there. But there’s been no direct evidence he knew the details, and in any event, the I.R.S. started cracking down on such shelters in 2000, making it highly unlikely Mr. Romney would have embraced the strategy for his own returns within the last decade.

He’s also been faulted for treating a horse partly owned by his wife as a loss-generating passive investment, rather than as a hobby. Even though that had little effect on his overall tax liability, Professor Kleinbard contends that that and other tax avoidance measures demonstrate a propensity to engage in aggressive tax strategies.

But even Professor Kleinbard doubts that Mr. Romney paid no income tax. “It’s possible theoretically that Romney didn’t pay, but improbable,” he said. Far more likely is that he paid a very low rate that would generate renewed criticism.

This may help explain why Mr. Romney is refusing to release more of his own returns, especially those for 2009. On the face of it, his stubbornness is perplexing. The electorate already knows that he’s immensely wealthy and that he pays a very low tax rate compared with many people who make far less.

There’s no reason to fault Mr. Romney for taking advantage of loopholes the tax code offers the superrich, however ill advised they may be as a matter of public policy. Mr. Romney didn’t make the law, and he’s called for broadening the tax base, which presumably means eliminating some of the breaks that benefited him. He could easily speak to that issue, since who would know better than he does which loopholes should be closed?

Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate who received 23 years of Mr. Romney’s returns as part of the vice-presidential vetting process in 2008, has volunteered that “I can personally vouch for the fact that there was nothing in his tax returns that would in any way be disqualifying for him to be a candidate.” Something that would disqualify, him, as opposed to merely alienating voters, may be a pretty high bar, but presumably it rules out anything illegal or unethical. Senator McCain declined to be more specific.

Which leaves plenty of room for speculation, informed or otherwise. Senator Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, set off a media storm when he told The Huffington Post the week before last that a former Bain Capital investor had told him Mr. Romney “didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” adding, “I’m not certain” if that’s true. It can’t be — Mr. Romney must have paid sales, property and other taxes. Presumably Senator Reid’s unnamed source meant that Mr. Romney paid no federal income tax for years.

The candidate promptly denied the claim, saying he had paid taxes every year. Still, he was vague, telling ABC News he “couldn’t remember” whether he paid less than his 2010 federal income tax rate of 13.9 percent in some years and didn’t specify which taxes he meant.

And when Senator McCain said there was nothing “disqualifying” in Mr. Romney’s returns, he would not have seen Mr. Romney’s returns for 2009, which were filed after his vice-presidential vetting.

As long as Mr. Romney withholds his returns, continued speculation, and even outlandish conjecture, will probably flourish. “It’s reinforced my view that he’d be better off just releasing the returns rather than having people blindly speculating,” Leonard E. Burman, a tax specialist and professor of public affairs at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, told me this week. “It seems like one of those slow-drip water torture things, and eventually he’s going to have to do it.”

For the record, I paid total tax of 37 percent in 2010 and 33 percent in 2011. And should there be a groundswell of interest, I’ll release my results for as many years as anyone wants. I haven’t done the calculations for years before 2010, but I’d be surprised if they’re much different.

What’s abundantly clear, both from Mr. Romney’s 2010 returns and from the returns of the top 400, is that at the very pinnacle of taxpayers, the United States has a regressive tax system. The top 400 earn more than 1 percent of all income in the United States, more than double their share in 1992. These 400 earned a total of $81 billion in 2009 — but paid an average tax rate of just 19.9 percent.

“It’s regressive because capital gains and dividends dominate the top returns and are taxed at a preferential rate,” Professor Kleinbard said.

Professor Burman added: “Our tax code has a number of flaws, one of which is that it doesn’t do a very good job of discriminating based on income. It is progressive over all, but very high-income people can pay very little tax. How they avoid tax is an important and legitimate issue we should be talking about.”

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We're still waiting for Warren Buffet's company to pay its taxes for the past God knows how many years. (Just to throw in an opposing view)

There were a lot of very rich people who lost companies, value on their assets, etc ..... that could be written off. In a very heavy duty recession, this is to be expected. I don't pretend to know all of the details ... but I do know that we wouldn't have any taxes collected if the richer people didn't pay the bulk of them.

I know that I wrote off every single thing I could last year because I made very little, but still had to pay taxes. I wound up paying about 2.45% federal taxes after I managed about $12,000 in write offs. (plus my personal exemption) I took everything I was eligible for. Should I have taken less? Should anyone?

How is raising income tax rates on the wealthy going to help? The tax rate is already double what these people are paying.

Dunno.

If we restructure our income tax system, with far fewer deductions, and stable tax rates, then we could actually raise more tax revenue with lower rates .....

But, of course, certain politicians talk up raising rates on the rich ..... while leaving miles wide tax loopholes in place.

How do they get there?

Deductions.

If we eliminate deductions and tax loopholes, while also cutting rates, then we can get to a place where the tax system becomes more honest.

If we eliminate the loopholes and obscene deductions, we can easily afford to cut tax rates, and have a far more honest tax system.

It will never happen though ..... because tax rates will change, but loopholes get expanded to pay off supporters.

You also get people who game the system, like President Obama's good friend Warren Buffet, who takes stock and such instead of a salary, because he can pay less taxes that way. How the hell will raising income tax rates affect him one bit? Do you think that Buffet would be complaining about income tax rates if he had to take his compensation as salary, and pay taxes on that salary, and then could use his after tax salary to buy stock? I bet that he wouldn;t be crying about wanting to pay a higher rate.

I don't think that we necessarily disagree about loopholes and deductions. However, raising tax rates does little to affect taxes paid. That's why tax collections rise when tax rates are cut, and loopholes are closed. This is the path to a truly "fair" tax system.

j/c

The article tells you how "they" do it.

Loss carryforwards...loss...note the word loss...if I lose 10 million on stocks this year and make 7 million the next year, I get to offset this year's gains with last year's losses.

Why is that evil?

I'll tell you what...take away that "loophole" and people will stop investing money in the market.

So "they" didn't pay taxes while they are rich...but they LOST money...so they had no income to pay taxes on. Simple.

The other item is the deduction for charities. Because they gave money to charities. Gave. Gave. Gave. They gave away so much money that their tax was reduced to very little.

The article - like every one of its kind - glosses over the FACT that most of these people lost money so they didn't pay taxes...they lost money. And/or they donated big money to help charities do their thing.

Too bad most people won't take the time to THINK and understand what is being thrown at them.

Big deal I'm more upset at all the folks who got back 4, 5, and 6 thousand more back than they paid in taxes. Raise taxes on the super rich sure go ahead, just as long as they also stop handing out free money to those who didn't earn it.

How about corporations like GE .... whose CEO is on the President's so-called job's council ..... and who actually made money off of the taxpayers at tax time?

Child tax credit and earned income tax credits for individuals, for starters .......

Corporate tax credits are another method for getting back more than an entity paid in.

Someone brought up Warren Buffet earlier in the thread ..... and the reason he pays so little in income taxes is because he pays himself, not in salary, but in stock. He predominantly pays capital gains instead of actual income tax. In other words, he games the system, and then complains that the system doesn't charge him enough. It's one of the more dishonest political arguments of last year .... and there were a LOT of dishonest political arguments to come out of DC last year.

Then we look at the fact that we borrow about 40 cents of every dollar we spend in Washington, and what does that add up to in days? That's about 146 days that we cover with IOUs.

Obama wants to raise taxes on the "rich" ..... all but claiming that this will solve things for us ...... but such a tax increase would cover about 8 days of Washington spending at current levels.

That leaves 138 days unpaid ..... and adding to the deficit.

Of course, if we just raise taxes on the rich ..... that will solve everything .....

There were also home buying tax credits for lower income first time buyers to get up to $8000 "refunded" to them if they bought a home. That was a fully refundable tax credit, and just one more example.

As far as Buffett goes, his complaining that he doesn't pay enough in income taxes when he uses the system to make sure he doesn't have to is dishonest to me. It would be like a person running every stop sign they see and then complaining that reckless people like that are going to kill someone one day. Raising income tax rates will not affect Buffet one bit, but that's what he advocates.

As far as Obama's plans .... what are they? He has previously submitted budgets that are so far out of bounds that he can't even get a single Democrat to vote for them. Now Harry Reid won't even allow a budget to come to the Senate floor for a vote. Do you think that he is doing that on his own? Do you think that he would refuse to allow a budget to come up for a vote if the President of his own party wanted one to come up for a vote?

Obama has thrown around a lot of stuff .... extend the tax cuts .... don't extend them .... extend some of them ...... but what plan has he put forth? What plan has he led effectively on? He whines and complains a lot, but he hasn't even tried to get anything through Congress.

Right now, what is Obama pushing? Class warfare ..... "The rich aren't paying their fair share", and "all we're doing is asking the rich to go back to what they were paying under Clinton when the economy was booming". That's it. Again, his big "plan" for taxes on the rich would pay for 8 days of federal spending. BFD.

Under Paul Ryan's plan, Mitt Romney wouldn't pay any taxes for the next ten years -- or any of the years after that. Now, do I know that that's true. Yes, I'm certain.

Well, maybe not quite nothing. In 2010 -- the only year we have seen a full return from him -- Romney would have paid an effective tax rate of around 0.82 percent under the Ryan plan, rather than the 13.9 percent he actually did. How would someone with more than $21 million in taxable income pay so little? Well, the vast majority of Romney's income came from capital gains, interest, and dividends. And Ryan wants to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

Of course, Romney criticized this idea back in January when Newt Gingrich proposed it by pointing out that zeroing out taxes on savings and investment would mean zeroing out his own taxes.



Almost. Romney did earn $593,996 in author and speaking fees in 2010 that still would be taxed under the Ryan plan. Just not much. Ryan would cut the top marginal tax rate from 35 to 25 percent and get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax -- saving Romney another $292,389 or so on his 2010 tax bill. Now, Romney would still owe self-employment taxes on his author and speaking fees, but that only amounts to $29,151. Add it all up, and Romney would have paid $177,650 out of a taxable income of $21,661,344, for a cool effective rate of 0.82 percent.

But what about corporate taxes? Aren't they a double tax on savings and investment, so Romney's "real" rate is higher than his headline rate? No. As Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, Romney has structured his investments as "pass-throughs" that avoid corporate tax. In other words, the 0.82 percent tax rate is really a 0.82 percent tax rate.

It might seem impossible to fund the government when the super-rich pay no taxes. That is accurate. Ryan would actually raise taxes on the bottom 30 percent of earners, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, but that hardly fills the revenue hole he would create. The solution? All but eliminate all government outside of Social Security and defense -- a point my colleague Derek Thompson has made in incredible chart form.

Maybe Harry Reid's mysterious source that Romney didn't pay taxes for a decade was really a time-traveler from the future. If Romney wins, it could very well be true.

link

Common Sense
Judge a Tax Plan by Its Loopholes
By JAMES B. STEWART
Published: March 23, 2012


Having touched the third rail of American politics last year — proposed cuts to entitlements like Medicare — and lived to fight another day, Representative Paul Ryan was back this week with a revised Republican budget proposal and another storm of criticism. His budget “slashes the safety net to pay for tax cuts mostly for wealthy Americans“(a column in The Washington Post); is one in which “the rich pay less in taxes than the unfairly low rates they pay now” (an editorial in The New York Times); and “would shower the wealthiest few Americans with an average tax cut of at least $150,000”
Some preferences would be eliminated under Paul Ryan’s tax plan. It is unclear which ones.

As I worked on my own taxes this week and realized I may be paying even more than I did last year, when I paid 24 percent of my adjusted gross income in federal income tax and 37 percent in combined federal and state — more, as I’ve reported, than the average 18 percent paid by the top 400 taxpayers earning an average of $270 million a year — I found it hard to believe anyone would seriously propose cutting the already-low tax rates of the ultrawealthy. With multimillionaires like Mitt Romney paying just 13.9 percent of his $21.7 million of adjusted gross income in federal tax, how much lower can their rates go?

So I turned to Mr. Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” and its proposal for tax reform: “The tax code is patently unfair: many of the deductions and preferences in the system — which serve to narrow the tax base — were lobbied for and are mainly used by a relatively small group of mostly higher-income individuals.” These tax preferences amount to $1 trillion a year, the proposal states, and “these tax preferences are disproportionately used by upper-income individuals. ...There’s nothing fair about that.”

This is a conservative Republican document intended to cut taxes on the wealthy? To me it sounds like a proposal to raise their taxes by depriving them of cherished “loopholes,” to use the proposal’s word.

Mr. Ryan wants two simple tax rates: 25 percent for higher incomes and 10 percent for lower incomes. He wants to abolish the alternative minimum tax, which has hit an ever-growing number of middle-class taxpayers, especially in high-tax states like New York and California. He wants the results to be revenue-neutral.

But there’s no getting around the fact that a 25 percent rate on the top earners would nearly double Mr. Romney’s effective rate and more than double it for the 101 of the top 400 taxpayers who pay less than 10 percent, assuming the loopholes are indeed closed. (The White House calculation that the Ryan plan would result in a tax cut for the wealthy assumes they won’t be.) A top rate of 25 percent may sound like a cut from current higher rates, but so few wealthy taxpayers pay the top rate that it would be a significant increase for many of them.

I caught up with Mr. Ryan this week as he was on his way to a vote on the House floor. “All I’m saying is, let’s have a fair, simple and competitive system. Let’s get beyond the rhetoric of class division,” Mr. Ryan told me. “The fact is that nearly all the loopholes and tax shelters benefit the top bracket taxpayers. For every dollar you park in a tax shelter, that dollar is taxed at zero. You take away the shelters, and we can have a lower rate for everybody. It’s really that simple. As for fairness, under the current system you can have two people living next door to each other with the same income paying a dramatically different tax rate. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that and we’ve got to fix it.”

Of course, one man’s loophole or shelter is another’s beneficial social policy. Just what those policies should be, and which of the current tax breaks would have to be sacrificed to pay for them, remains to be decided.

But Mr. Ryan said he believed everything should be on the table, even some of the Republicans’ most cherished tax breaks. “What we need is to get the country behind the principle first, which is to lower rates by broadening the tax base, then proceed to do it,” he said. “We need hearings in the light of day, with no back-room dealings. If we can’t afford certain policies, or if we can’t afford to retain certain tax breaks, then let’s have an open debate about it. But let’s do first things first. You can’t go out there with a detailed formula until there’s a consensus that we need to broaden the base and reduce rates.”

Despite Mr. Ryan’s reluctance to specify which tax preferences might have to be curtailed or eliminated, there’s no mystery as to what they would have to be. Looking only at the returns of the top 400 taxpayers, the biggest loophole they exploit by far is the preferential tax rate on capital gains, carried interest and dividend income. The top 400 taxpayers account for over 10 percent of all capital gains and nearly 5 percent of all dividend income reported by individual taxpayers.

“Unless they tax capitals gains and dividend income like ordinary income, the Ryan plan will be a massive tax cut for high-end taxpayers,” said Leonard Burman, a tax expert and a professor of public affairs at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. “To modern Republicans, the idea that low capital gains rates spur growth is a religion. I doubt that even Mr. Ryan could get other Republicans to support that, but then, Ronald Reagan did it, so I suppose anything is possible.” (Under President Reagan’s tax reform legislation of 1986, capital gains were taxed at the same rate as ordinary income.)

The other big break for the richest taxpayers is the charitable contribution deduction; the 400 top taxpayers account for 4.55 percent of all charitable deductions. Reducing or eliminating other big breaks — deductions for state and local taxes, the mortgage deduction, interest-paid deductions and miscellaneous deductions — shifts the burden much further down the economic ladder. The top 400 taxpayers account for just 1.31 percent of all itemized deductions.

One of the largest tax breaks benefiting middle-income taxpayers is the exclusion from tax of the value of employer-provided health care benefits, (which costs the government $147.8 billion, more than any other tax break). And to broaden the base by an additional $1 trillion, as Mr. Ryan suggests, means that nearly all of these breaks would have to be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated.

Although Mr. Ryan has been branded a radical, many of his tax reform proposals have bipartisan support. Two major commissions — the Debt Reduction Task Force headed by former Senator Pete Domenici, a Republican, and Alice M. Rivlin, head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, and the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — reached similar conclusions.

“He’s a purist when it comes to tax reform and I admire him for that,” Ms. Rivlin, now at the Brookings Institution, told me this week. “With respect to the form of what he’s proposing, I like it. He wants to broaden the base and bring the rates down and have a simplified rate structure. That general idea is embraced by many Democrats. The problem is, if you’re going to bring rates down as far as he suggests, you have to make drastic reductions in tax expenditures and dearly loved ones at that, such as the home mortgage deduction and the exclusion of employer-paid health care from income tax. To get to revenue-neutral with rates that low, you have to phase out nearly all those big tax deductions, and he doesn’t discuss the specifics of that.”

Dr. Rivlin also applauds Mr. Ryan’s emphasis on the way tax preferences benefit the wealthy. “He’s done a very good thing here,” she said. “There’s no question that those policies heavily favor the upper 1 percent, and certainly the upper 2 or 3 percent. If you’re going to have tax reform, then you’re going to have to increase the effective tax rate on the ultrawealthy.”

Mr. Ryan’s tax proposals have drawn fire from the right as well as the left. Ron Paul called them “very disappointing,” and said both tax and spending rates should be much lower. Rick Santorum called the plan a “great blueprint,” but argued it failed to cut spending deeply enough. Mitt Romney has embraced the plan.

Mr. Ryan seemed unfazed by criticisms from both right and left when I spoke to him this week. “I gave up fear for Lent two years ago,” he said. “I took over the budget committee in 2007. I was deeply involved in 2008, when we had the crash and the financial crisis. It was ugly. It caught us by surprise. I was in meeting after meeting talking about another Great Depression, a deflationary spiral, and I said, ‘We better not let this happen again.’ ”

Given the current budget deficit and its trajectory, he said, “it’s obvious we’re headed for a cliff and now it’s really close. This looming fiscal crisis is the most predictable one we’ve ever had. I feel from a moral standpoint you have to do everything you can to prevent it from hitting.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 24, 2012, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Taking Aim At Loopholes, In Theory.


I want to hide my link because it is a biased site.

The only way he cuts the overall tax rate for the super rich is if loopholes that favor the super rich aren't closed.

When the discussion turns to capital gains, I will pay attention.

Ryan wants 0 percent for capital gains, which is how the most wealthy have income. They have the flexibility to take income as dividends, which is single biggest reason why Romney had a 13.9 percent effective rate.

NRTU.. I'm just curious, if you paid no taxes throughout the year and at the end of the year you just had to figure up your income and write a check to the government... what percentage of their income should a person who makes $200 million pay? Just curious...

Quote:

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We're still waiting for Warren Buffet's company to pay its taxes for the past God knows how many years. (Just to throw in an opposing view)

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How is saying "that rich guy's company hasn't paid taxes" an opposing view to "rich people aren't paying nearly as much in taxes as they're whining about?"

Because Warren Buffet is the driving force behind this whole "The rich don't pay enough", yet he set up his own "non salary" in such a way as to specifically avoid taxes ...... and also has his company having somehow managed to miss paying their taxes for years.

He is a tax cheat on one side, and a tax evader on the other. But .. he feels bad because he doesn't pay enough in taxes .....

So, it's not really an opposing view, it's just saying that he should also stop trying to skirt tax codes and pay his fair share?

But it's also saying that income tax rates frequently mean little.

Well, they must mean something to somebody, because there sure has been a lot of stuff stirred about the idea of returning them to where they were before they were reduced by the previous administration.

Well, that will pay for 8 days of spending at current levels ..... so it's a case of great advertising rather than reality. (Returning the top tax rates on those making $250,000 and more)

I agree. I know we can't just shut down the country and open under new management, but we do need to take a big picture comprehensive look at taxing and spending and figure out how to get out of this mess.

Whatever happened to the Simpson-Bowles report? I saw a lot of stuff in there that seemed like a good idea, it just needed refined... If the democrats don't get off of their "Any cut to social programs is bad" mentality and the republicans don't get off of their "Any thing that even smells like more taxes is bad" mentality... then we will continue the way we are.... We need reform, we need leadership... and without the latter, the former will never happen. And I don't see either candidate being able to provide that leadership.

The masses are locked into their talking points on either side, few politicians are even willing to broach the subject of something that might make the base unhappy, even if it is what is drastically needed... both sides make symbolic gestures once in a while in a form that nobody thinks will ever pass but it allows them to say, "See, we tried to work with them." .... Quite frankly, it's pathetic... now let's go campaign for more of the same and tell each other why one side or the other is sending us down the crapper.

Difficult for me to argue with any of that.

While I agree with you that the amount of campaigning it is getting is dramatically out of proportion with ultimate good it will do... something still needs to be done.

I think it is a sign of a very poorly written tax code when in any given year, couple A can make $200,000,000 and pay $70,000,000 in taxes... and couple B, next door, can make $200,000,000 and pay $0 because of how they made it, how they invested it, how much they lost last year, how much they gave to Goodwill, etc...

You won't get any argument from me at all that this sort of thing needs to be drummed into extinction, but you have the wolves guarding the hen house so I'm thinking that whatever measures get passed, they're going to be just another shell game.

I see both sides of it.

If I pay 40% of my income, why shouldn't the other guy, even if it ends up being more real dollars. I'm losing 40 cents on EVERY dollar I make.... it's only fair if that applies to everyone else.

The flip side is that taxes are meant to have each person pay a fair share for the things we need to provide as a society. If I earn $200 million in a year and have to pay 40% in taxes, that'd be $80 million dollars.... at that rate, I may as well tell everyone to take a hike and just build my own private roads and water supply.


There is a point where, while the percentages may not stack up evenly, you have to look at someone's contribution and acknowledge that they've given enough for the year.