4 ms·

The outrage seems reasonable, not ironic or hypocritical. I want to pay higher taxes (and I do donate money to charities and NGOs), but I do not want my taxes t

The outrage seems reasonable, not ironic or hypocritical. I want to pay higher taxes (and I do donate money to charities and NGOs), but I do not want my taxes to be used to cover for the tax breaks of the super rich. We are in this all together, and we should all work to make our world better. You can argue that the government is bad at spending that money, but this is a completely separate complaint.

ams6110 9y ago
The rich already pay the lions share of income tax. How much more of their money needs to be taken from them to make it fair? Also the argument that the government is bad at spending money is exactly the point. I would possibly be supportive of higher taxes if I thought the money would be used to pay for useful things.
- krastanov 9y ago
  To your claim about lion's shares: the federal tax code is progressive by a very slim margin, while state tax codes are regressive. Therefore, no, percentage-wise the rich are not paying more. And the complaint is that this particular plan will let the rich pay less, not that the rich should pay more.
  - paulsutter 9y ago
    45% of households pay no income tax at all. I'm not saying taxes are fair or balanced or anything like that. I'm just responding to your claim that the tax code is progressive by a "very slim margin". https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fed...
    - krastanov 9y ago
      I thought that "progressive" and "regressive" refer to what percentage tax you pay given what bracket (in dollars, not in percentile) you are. I would have thought that the 45% mentioned in the article is proof of how many Americans are poor, not that the tax plan is progressive. Even with a moderately regressive income tax the rich will be paying more total tax even though they are paying a smaller percentage of their income as tax. Therefore you can not make any conclusions about the fairness of a tax by saying that the top 20% of earners pay 80% of the total amount of income tax (it would have been absolutely crazy if this was not the case, unless everybody had the same income). As such, I do not see how this article can be used to say anything about whether the tax is progressive or regressive (and as you mentioned, whether it is fair altogether).
      - camiller 9y ago
        They are not well defined terms and are meant more to evoke an emotional response. Progressive does mean that you pay at an increasing rate the higher your income is. A flat percentage tax (example everyone pays 18% no loopholes) should be neither progressive or regressive but most US liberals would still call it regressive because it would be if you consider the current rates as a baseline. A truly regressive plan would actually decrease rates as you went higher in income. Neither Federal or any state that has income taxes has a truly regressive tax schedule. Edit: I suppose if you figure in sales taxes into overall tax burden you could call some states regressive. But that is not a feature of their income tax rates.
      - ameister14 9y ago
        Yes, and the top earners pay 396% more of their income than the bottom as far as federal income tax is concerned - this is traditionally understood to mean it's highly progressive as a system.
    - camiller 9y ago
      45% of households pay no or negative income tax at all. Remember some of them get more back than they would have paid, so negative taxes paid. in 2014 the top 1% of income earners earned 20.6% of all income and paid 39.5% of income taxes collected. the bottom 50% earned 11.2% of income and paid 3.45% of income taxes. https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170201091804/TaxFoundation-FF540.pdf https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170201091804/TaxFoundation...
    - Retric 9y ago
      Only if you ignore Social Security and Medicare which add up to 15.3% income taxes paid by all working people making federal taxes more regressive than you might think.
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      Federal income tax rates are highly progressive, but the total tax burden paid to all levels of government is only slightly progressive (and actually slightly regressive above the 99th percentile of income). WaPo published an article showing the total tax burden by income. The bottom 20% pay an average of 17.4%. It gradually increases to around 30% for the 80-99th percentiles then actually drops down to 29% for the top percentile. [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres-why-the-47-percent-argument-is-an-abuse-of-tax-data/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres...
  - ameister14 9y ago
    What do you mean by a very slim margin? If you believe that the regressive nature of state taxes balances the progressive nature of Federal, do you believe that state income tax collects as much as Federal, or are you simply counting them equally because they are both types of taxes? If the latter, why would you say that the rich don't pay more, percentage wise? If the former, why do you believe this?
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      I believe they are counting all taxes, not just income taxes. Sales and excise taxes often hit the poor very hard. On average, across all states the bottom 20% pay 10.9% of their income in taxes while the top 1% pay 5.4%. In Washington, which has no income tax and a high sales tax, the poorest 20% pay 16.8% of their income and the top 1% pay only 2.4%. [1] [1] https://itep.org/whopays/#The%2010%20Most%20Regressive%20State%20&%20Local%20Tax%20Systems https://itep.org/whopays/#The%2010%20Most%20Regressive%20Sta...
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  > The rich already pay the lions share of income tax. How much more of their money needs to be taken from them to make it fair? To make it fair, we take the means of production: ownership over companies, facilities, land.
  - camiller 9y ago
    Any more the largest "owner" of most publicly traded companies are mutual funds that are in turn owned by 401k/IRA accounts. So teachers, firefighters, police, union workers, office workers, government workers. So basically you got that already.

ams6110 9y ago

The rich already pay the lions share of income tax. How much more of their money needs to be taken from them to make it fair? Also the argument that the government is bad at spending money is exactly the point. I would possibly be supportive of higher taxes if I thought the money would be used to pay for useful things.

krastanov 9y ago
To your claim about lion's shares: the federal tax code is progressive by a very slim margin, while state tax codes are regressive. Therefore, no, percentage-wise the rich are not paying more. And the complaint is that this particular plan will let the rich pay less, not that the rich should pay more.
- paulsutter 9y ago
  45% of households pay no income tax at all. I'm not saying taxes are fair or balanced or anything like that. I'm just responding to your claim that the tax code is progressive by a "very slim margin". https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fed...
  - krastanov 9y ago
    I thought that "progressive" and "regressive" refer to what percentage tax you pay given what bracket (in dollars, not in percentile) you are. I would have thought that the 45% mentioned in the article is proof of how many Americans are poor, not that the tax plan is progressive. Even with a moderately regressive income tax the rich will be paying more total tax even though they are paying a smaller percentage of their income as tax. Therefore you can not make any conclusions about the fairness of a tax by saying that the top 20% of earners pay 80% of the total amount of income tax (it would have been absolutely crazy if this was not the case, unless everybody had the same income). As such, I do not see how this article can be used to say anything about whether the tax is progressive or regressive (and as you mentioned, whether it is fair altogether).
    - camiller 9y ago
      They are not well defined terms and are meant more to evoke an emotional response. Progressive does mean that you pay at an increasing rate the higher your income is. A flat percentage tax (example everyone pays 18% no loopholes) should be neither progressive or regressive but most US liberals would still call it regressive because it would be if you consider the current rates as a baseline. A truly regressive plan would actually decrease rates as you went higher in income. Neither Federal or any state that has income taxes has a truly regressive tax schedule. Edit: I suppose if you figure in sales taxes into overall tax burden you could call some states regressive. But that is not a feature of their income tax rates.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      Yes, and the top earners pay 396% more of their income than the bottom as far as federal income tax is concerned - this is traditionally understood to mean it's highly progressive as a system.
  - camiller 9y ago
    45% of households pay no or negative income tax at all. Remember some of them get more back than they would have paid, so negative taxes paid. in 2014 the top 1% of income earners earned 20.6% of all income and paid 39.5% of income taxes collected. the bottom 50% earned 11.2% of income and paid 3.45% of income taxes. https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170201091804/TaxFoundation-FF540.pdf https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170201091804/TaxFoundation...
  - Retric 9y ago
    Only if you ignore Social Security and Medicare which add up to 15.3% income taxes paid by all working people making federal taxes more regressive than you might think.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Federal income tax rates are highly progressive, but the total tax burden paid to all levels of government is only slightly progressive (and actually slightly regressive above the 99th percentile of income). WaPo published an article showing the total tax burden by income. The bottom 20% pay an average of 17.4%. It gradually increases to around 30% for the 80-99th percentiles then actually drops down to 29% for the top percentile. [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres-why-the-47-percent-argument-is-an-abuse-of-tax-data/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres...
- ameister14 9y ago
  What do you mean by a very slim margin? If you believe that the regressive nature of state taxes balances the progressive nature of Federal, do you believe that state income tax collects as much as Federal, or are you simply counting them equally because they are both types of taxes? If the latter, why would you say that the rich don't pay more, percentage wise? If the former, why do you believe this?
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    I believe they are counting all taxes, not just income taxes. Sales and excise taxes often hit the poor very hard. On average, across all states the bottom 20% pay 10.9% of their income in taxes while the top 1% pay 5.4%. In Washington, which has no income tax and a high sales tax, the poorest 20% pay 16.8% of their income and the top 1% pay only 2.4%. [1] [1] https://itep.org/whopays/#The%2010%20Most%20Regressive%20State%20&%20Local%20Tax%20Systems https://itep.org/whopays/#The%2010%20Most%20Regressive%20Sta...
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
> The rich already pay the lions share of income tax. How much more of their money needs to be taken from them to make it fair? To make it fair, we take the means of production: ownership over companies, facilities, land.
- camiller 9y ago
  Any more the largest "owner" of most publicly traded companies are mutual funds that are in turn owned by 401k/IRA accounts. So teachers, firefighters, police, union workers, office workers, government workers. So basically you got that already.