here's what i came up with.
Why Some Tax Units Pay No Income Tax
about half of the people who don't pay income tax do so because they're poor (that's 25% of americans, which to me seems like a lot) and the other half because of exemptions essentially courtesy of the bush tax cuts. apparently a married couple with 50K of income and two dependents might be able to game their return so as not to pay income taxes. (of course, cons never bring up that that family still has to pay sales taxes, payroll taxes, and a whole host of other taxes.)
in any case, i'm still not clear what your solution is, gunboy. do we need to make that family making 50K pay more taxes so the rich can continue to get out of THEIR fair share?
You like to ignore facts, don't you? A post earlier in this thread showed that the rich are not only paying their fair share, but they are paying well over their fair share of taxes, yet you refuse to see that.
the rich have always paid proportionately somewhat more than what would be the case in a flat tax scenario, that's been true since the income tax was created. the reason why is because if you tax the poor as much as you tax the rich, the poor experience food insecurity, are evicted from their homes, etc. if you tax the rich, a yacht goes a year without a new paint job. it's called a progressive income tax, and it's been the norm since the income tax was created. now, if you want to overturn that, that's fine, but understand that would be a very radical thing to do that overturns about a century of precedent.
[Here's a question for you, how much is their fair share? 50% of what they make? 75%? How about you just tell us how much you expect them to keep of THEIR OWN money and we'll just have the government confiscate the rest? Would that make you happy?
the clinton levels seemed pretty good to me. my rule of thumb is, let's go back to the last boom economy, find out what people were paying then, and start with that.
Oh, and even if the rich paid what you consider their fair share we'd still have a deficit. You see, when you spend more than you could ever possibly take in you're never going to get out of the hole.
Rick
right, well, when you're fighting two unfunded wars in the middle of a recession you're going to have a deficit no matter what, yeah, that's true.