Liberalism has won(part 2)

[jillian]

Look it's clear that I'm not toeing the republican party line.

It's simple math.

If the top wage earners have a larger percentage of their income taxed than the middle class then they are paying disproportionally larger sums of money.

The fact that you even bothered to show your face on a political forum without knowing this is laughable.

Here is your link

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

Moneychimp?

Try factcheck...at least they have no agenda.

The share of the reduced overall burden has gone down for the most affluent groups, mainly as a result of cutting the top rates and reducing taxes on income from dividends and capital gains.

Furthermore, the middle 20% pays a bit higher share, and the next-highest 20% saw their share of the total burden go up by seven-tenths of one percent.

Middle class taxes went down by an average of 1.9 percent. Taxes for the highest 1% went down 6.8%

 

[Gunny]

What is considered poverty line, on average?

And dont give me the $1 a day stat, I'm not talking about the third world.

I beleive it is around $13-15K.

Originally Posted by Kathianne
Whatever I make?

It really isn't about what me make in my book. It's how much of it I bust my butt for so I can have the honor and privilege of supporting some slug and/or an inefficient government bureaucracy.

 

[Said1]

Monkeychimp?

Try factcheck...at least they have no agenda.

The share of the reduced overall burden has gone down for the most affluent groups, mainly as a result of cutting the top rates and reducing taxes on income from dividends and capital gains.

Furthermore, the middle 20% pays a bit higher share, and the next-highest 20% saw their share of the total burden go up by seven-tenths of one percent.

Middle class taxes went down by an average of 1.9 percent. Taxes for the highest 1% went down 6.8%

Forget the link?

http://www.factcheck.org/article280.html

 

[jillian]

Forget the link?

http://www.factcheck.org/article280.html

Yeah... thanks.

 

[Powerman]

Monkeychimp?

Try factcheck...at least they have no agenda.

The share of the reduced overall burden has gone down for the most affluent groups, mainly as a result of cutting the top rates and reducing taxes on income from dividends and capital gains.

Furthermore, the middle 20% pays a bit higher share, and the next-highest 20% saw their share of the total burden go up by seven-tenths of one percent.

Middle class taxes went down by an average of 1.9 percent. Taxes for the highest 1% went down 6.8%

OK I just googled tax brackets and found the first link that I knew to be accurate and posted the link.

here is a link to wikipedia which corroborates what I have already posted.

Fact: The rich pay a higher percentage than the middle class

Fact: You said they didn't

That means you were wrong. How much longer do you want this pistol whipping to commence? Save face now and retract your idiotic claims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_bracket

And your claim that they got the largest cut is also wrong

BTW that money chimp site is very reliable. It allows you to compare rates from year to year

 

[jillian]

OK I just googled tax brackets and found the first link that I knew to be accurate and posted the link.

here is a link to wikipedia which corroborates what I have already posted.

Fact: The rich pay a higher percentage than the middle class

Fact: You said they didn't

That means you were wrong. How much longer do you want this pistol whipping to commence? Save face now and retract your idiotic claims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_bracket

And your claim that they got the largest cut is also wrong

BTW that money chimp site is very reliable. It allows you to compare rates from year to year

Piss up a rope, dear.

I said they received a disproportionate BENEFIT from the tax cuts. What did you get back? $200? $400? How much do you think Dick Cheney saved off his last tax bill?

 

[insein]

What is considered poverty line, on average?

And dont give me the $1 a day stat, I'm not talking about the third world.

Technically the poverty line (Line where you pay no taxes) is $8200 for a single person. For a married couple with 2 kids, it's $22800. That is the total exemptions you can take on your 1040 tax return. Income below those numbers with that amount of people pay zero taxes.

 

[Said1]

Technically the poverty line (Line where you pay no taxes) is $8200 for a single person. For a married couple with 2 kids, it's $22800. That is the total exemptions you can take on your 1040 tax return. Income below those numbers with that amount of people pay zero taxes.

Thanks, Awnold.


BTW, did you catch SNL last night?

"a few signs, some barbed wire and 10,000 invisible predators"

 

[insein]

Piss up a rope, dear.

I said they received a disproportionate BENEFIT from the tax cuts. What did you get back? $200? $400? How much do you think Dick Cheney saved off his last tax bill?

Dick Cheney's tax return.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060414-2.html

Cheny made $8,819,006
He had $2,468,566 deducted in income taxes.
He received a $1,938,930 refund due to his overpayment of taxes throughout the year.
He also made $6,869,655 in charitable donations.

 

[Powerman]

Piss up a rope, dear.

I said they received a disproportionate BENEFIT from the tax cuts. What did you get back? $200? $400? How much do you think Dick Cheney saved off his last tax bill?

You're not getting off that easy. This is what you said in response to me saying that the top 1% pay a third of the taxes

But even assuming it's correct, the top 1% have about 90% of the wealth, so it's disproportionate. And remembering that people earning under the poverty line don't pay income taxes, that means the *burden* of the tax cuts is falling on the middle class.

You implied that the middle class pays a higher proportion of taxes than the rich. You were wrong.

You were also wrong in saying that the burden falls on them. The burden falls on the rich and the super rich.

Without the rich our tax revenues crumble. How anyone on a political forum can be naive to this fact is beyond me.

You can look at this 2 ways.

1. You can do what you were accusing me of doing and follow some stupid party line.

2. You can learn a few things from me and start looking for the truth instead of trolling around for info to back up a political party

Path 1 will lead you to be uneducated and brainwashed just the way they want you to be

Path 2 will open up your eyes to the truth


But I'll make a not so bold prediction and say you will default to defending democratic talking points.

Bottom line: most people aren't even remotely interested in the truth

This applies to both parties and their blind supporters

Flame on

 

[Annie]

Dick Cheney's tax return.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060414-2.html

Cheny made $8,819,006
He had $2,468,566 deducted in income taxes.
He received a $1,938,930 refund due to his overpayment of taxes throughout the year.
He also made $6,869,655 in charitable donations.

I remember something about that. Hey Insein, what about Alec Baldwin? :shocked: Teresa Heinz Kerry? As long as we're playing, John McCain? (though he probably didn't make the big bucks!)

 

[MtnBiker]

and doing away with the inheritance tax only gives a gift to the wealthiest among us since there is already an exemption of about a million dollars anyway.

The Death Tax is wrong on many fronts. Why should the aquirement of weath be punished?

Imagine a farmer working his whole life and willing his estate to his childeren only to have them sell it off to pay the taxes.

 

[jillian]

You're not getting off that easy. This is what you said in response to me saying that the top 1% pay a third of the taxes




You implied that the middle class pays a higher proportion of taxes than the rich. You were wrong.

You were also wrong in saying that the burden falls on them. The burden falls on the rich and the super rich.

Without the rich our tax revenues crumble. How anyone on a political forum can be naive to this fact is beyond me.

You can look at this 2 ways.

1. You can do what you were accusing me of doing and follow some stupid party line.

2. You can learn a few things from me and start looking for the truth instead of trolling around for info to back up a political party

Path 1 will lead you to be uneducated and brainwashed just the way they want you to be

Path 2 will open up your eyes to the truth


But I'll make a not so bold prediction and say you will default to defending democratic talking points.

Bottom line: most people aren't even remotely interested in the truth

This applies to both parties and their blind supporters

Flame on

I don't flame

Since we've never posted together before, I'll tell you that there are many issues on which I diverge from what you call democratic talking points.

I don't think what I said was inconstent. But if you do, you do. I doubt we'll convince each other. But perhaps the one thing we can agree on is that you can't cut taxes and then spend like a bunch of loony toons, regardless of where the tax cuts are coming from. How's that?

 

[Powerman]

I don't flame

Since we've never posted together before, I'll tell you that there are many issues on which I diverge from what you call democratic talking points.

I don't think what I said was inconstent. But if you do, you do. I doubt we'll convince each other. But perhaps the one thing we can agree on is that you can't cut taxes and then spend like a bunch of loony toons, regardless of where the tax cuts are coming from. How's that?

I agree with the latter point.

And apparently you have seen me post before because you've repped me before on some issue on the religious/ethics board.

I just haven't been here in a long time.

But you are correct. We can't cut taxes and start spending like a bunch of crazy loons.

But it's the spending that is the problem, not the cutting of the taxes. We don't run up debt because we don't tax enough, we run up debt because we spend too much. US citizens in all tax brackets are severely overtaxed because our tax money is being pissed away. And I mean literally pissed away.

 

[jillian]

The Death Tax is wrong on many fronts. Why should the aquirement of weath be punished?

Imagine a farmer working his whole life and willing his estate to his childeren only to have them sell it off to pay the taxes.

It's an "estate" tax. The dead person isn't affected. And the argument about the family farm is a specious one designed to distract from who really benefits.

Estate Tax Malarkey

Contrary to ad's claim that "your family" might be crippled, the vast majority of families actually are not affected by the estate tax. In fact, less than 3 percent of deceased adults in 2002 had estates subject to the tax, according to the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and figures from the IRS.

And though the ad focuses on family farms and businesses, the truth is that very few actually pay the estate tax. The Tax Policy Center projects that roughly 440 taxable estates were primarily made up of farm and business assets in 2004.

And even considering estates for which farming or business was a sideline, the Center found only 7,090 taxable estates for 2004 that included any farm or business income. That's still just 38 percent of all taxable estates. The fact is that repealing the estate tax entirely, as the ad advocates, would benefit mostly non-farmers and non-business-owners.

The ad would have been accurate had it said that "some families" are affected.

"Cost Them Everything?"

Far from imposing tax bills on farms and businesses that "cost them everything," the average estate tax paid by all farm and business estates in 2004 was just under 20 percent of the value of the estate, according to calculations by the Tax Policy Center.

The effective rate was far less for smaller estates. Of the 440 taxable family farm and business estates in 2004, two out of five paid an average rate of only 1.6 percent. These were taxable estates valued at less than $2 million.Very large estates valued at over $20 million paid at an average effective rate of just over 22 percent, a hefty tax bite but well short of "everything."

These effective rates are not to be confused with the top rate, which is currently 47 percent. But that marginal rate applies only to what is taxed, and currently the first $1.5 million of an estate is exempt. The Tax Policy Center's figures are an average effective rate on the entire estate, including any proceeds of life insurance. The taxable portion is often reduced further through charitable contributions or special provisions that allow most farms to reduce the taxable value of their real property by 40 to 70 percent of market value.

http://www.factcheck.org/article328.html

 

[Powerman]

I don't believe estate taxes should exist.

The money has already been taxed the first time around when the first person earned it and will make it's way back in the form of property taxes later.

Maybe it's time to ask yourself why the govt. wants their dirty fucking hands on every penny they can get a hold of.

The estate tax is daylight robbery. The money has already been taxed

 

[MtnBiker]

It's an "estate" tax. The dead person isn't affected.

Be the wealth that the person aquired is. Why should that be punished?

 

[jillian]

Report Identifies 18 Families Behind Multimillion-Dollar Deceptive Lobbying Campaign

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax has been aggressively led by 18 super-wealthy families, according to a report released today by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy at a press conference in Washington, D.C. The report details for the first time the vast money, influence and deceptive marketing techniques behind the rhetoric in the campaign to repeal the tax.

It reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.

The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo wine, Campbell’s soup, and Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms. Collectively, the list includes the first- and third-largest privately held companies in the United States, the richest family in Alabama and the world’s largest retailer.

These families have sought to keep their activities anonymous by using associations to represent them and by forming a massive coalition of business and trade associations dedicated to pushing for estate tax repeal. The report details the groups they have hidden behind – the trade associations they have used, the lobbyists they have hired, and the anti-estate tax political action committees, 527s and organizations to which they have donated heavily.

In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups. But just more than one-fourth of one percent of all estates will owe any estate taxes in 2006. And the American Farm Bureau, a member of the anti-estate tax coalition, was unable when asked by The New York Times to cite a single example of a family being forced to sell its farm because of estate tax liability.

“This report exposes one of the biggest con jobs in recent history,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “This long-running, secretive campaign funded by some of the country’s wealthiest families has relied on deception to bamboozle the public not only about who must pay the estate tax, but about how repealing it will affect the country.”

Said Lee Farris, senior organizer for estate tax policy at UFE, “It’s time for the majority of Americans who support the estate tax to speak out, and not let a handful of wealthy families sway Congress to twist the tax laws for their own benefit. Polls now show that most Americans support this tax and the revenue it yields to pay for vital services, especially given our nation’s huge deficit.”

While they extol the hard work of individual farmers and small businesses, most of the 18 families have been wealthy for generations; only five still include the people who first earned the family fortune. Members of the families are far less likely than most Americans to have paid taxes on their wealth; to a large extent, that wealth lies in assets that have appreciated but, unlike paychecks, have never been taxed.

These super-rich families have spent millions in personal wealth and used their companies’ resources and lobbying power in repeated attempts to influence members of Congress to repeal the tax. They have financed groups who have launched multimillion-dollar attack ads against Republican and Democratic senators alike, including former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Olympia Snow (R-Maine), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Lincoln Chaffee (R-R.I.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

The stakes of the campaign are great, not only for the super-wealthy families, but for the public. If the families’ repeal bid succeeds, it will cost the U.S. Treasury a trillion dollars in the first decade – roughly what it would cost to provide health insurance for every uninsured person in the United States.

“The estate tax should be regarded as just paying back to the country for all the wonderful things it’s made possible for the people who have that wealth,” said Bill Gates Sr. in an audio statement played at the press conference. “I don’t think there’s any great societal goal being served by inherited wealth. And certainly there’s no sensible argument that I can think of for insisting on being able to pass the last penny of $100 million on to your three kids.”

Added Elizabeth Letzler, an investment manager from New York who will be subject to the estate tax and who spoke at the press conference, “The current estate tax structure should permit any wealthy household to pass on a legacy of financial security, education and family heirlooms to the next generations.” She challenged the families showcased in the report: “Do something spectacular during your life-time investing in the social welfare and well-being of the children and grandchildren at the bottom of the pyramid.” Her daughter Stephanie, also in attendance, said, “If keeping the estate tax means a step closer to a debt-free treasury, a step closer to improved health care, Social Security, education, and every other program that makes me proud to be an American, show me where to sign the check.”

Paul Newman, actor and founder of Newman’s Own food company, agreed in a separate statement: “For those of us lucky enough to be born in this country and to have flourished here, the estate tax is a reasonable and appropriate way to return something to the common good. I’m proud to be among those supporting preservation of this tax, which is one of the fairest taxes we have.”

http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2182

 

[jillian]

Be the wealth that the person aquired is. Why should that be punished?

It's not being punished. The person who's acquiring wealth is taxed because they are getting income they didn't have prior.

And if you look at what I posted, a very small percent of people are even affected by the tax. The founding fathers wanted an Estate Tax because they didn't want an hereditary aristocracy. Nothing wrong with not forgetting that.

 

[Powerman]

I still don't see a reason why the govt. should be taxing this money again

I don't get it

Why should they tax money that has already been taxed? It's fucking robbery is what it is