I keep hearing complaints about 47 percent of us not paying any income tax.

[lefthandedlefty]

If the people that make the higher incomes are so upset with the 47% of us that pay no income taxes why don`t they just give us a raise in pay.Salaries paid to employees are 100% tax deductable so if you pay people more you reduce your tax burden and increase the employees tax burden.

[Sedona]

1. I'm pretty sure

children and retirees are included in the 47%

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Put em to work so they can pay taxes!

[freshwest]

6. Excellent point, makes the figures more honest. The ones spouting it just want to feel superior.

The truth is that what you said is always the case, but they want to find someone to complain about. When they should be looking closer to home, seeing that the world is not solely kept running by those able to pay taxes Nor should it be.

[Riftaxe]

11. Since the 47% figure is households

and not individuals, I think you're right...undoubtedly the number of individuals not paying Federal income tax is much higher then 47%

[Bluenorthwest]

19. Retirees also pay income taxes you know...a third are taxed on Social Security

payments as well as other incomes. That starts at about 25K in income. Also, children with income pay income taxes on that income.
There is no age where one is immune from income tax. Sure, most kids do not get income, some do, and they pay. Some elders do not make enough to pay income taxes, others do. No matter your age, tax is due based on income amounts. Make a certain amount, you pay up. It is a function of income, not of age.

[unblock]

2. people who pay more taxes are making more money before taxes and still making more money after taxes

i'm not even in the top 1% but i'm pretty high up there. my tax rate is high, but i am grateful to have found a career that enables me to take home more than most. i don't resent the higher taxes in the slightest, and in fact i think my own taxes should be raised because i am in the fortunate position of being able to better afford to cover for the shrub's fiscal disasters than most people.

it pisses me off to no end that people who make much, MUCH more than i do have the audacity to whine about their taxes, nevermind whine about the people earning less than them paying lower taxes or no income taxes at all.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. A wingnut actually told me that the rich DESERVE to pay less in taxes

because they are rich. They had to work hard to get rich so therefore, they've earned the right to pay less in taxes than a dumb lower income taxpayer.

[unblock]

8. sociopath.

up to a point, you do have to work harder and smarter, but there's also more than a bit of luck involved.

but once you get well into the top 1%, the VAST majority of the money they "earn" is from taking an unfair share from the team they work with and finding ways to exploit the commons -- to earn a private profit off of public goods. it also doesn't hurt to start off life with a small fortune in the first place.

they deserve to be punished and looked down on for this, not admired and lauded.

[freshwest]

4. Yeah, it is kicking someone when they're down. Fix the problem at the root, good thinking there.

[FarLeftFist]

7. Exactly! The fact that 47% of the citizens don't earn enough to pay taxes is the sad part.

Higher wages=Rising tides. Rising tides lift all boats.

[dkf]

16. That isn't the difference. You can have a kid working part time who pays more in taxes.

That is because he doesn't get the deductions. It's not how much you make, it's the exemptions and credits that do it.

[bhikkhu]

9. The overall tax burden is the best response to that

...which includes sales tax, property tax, state and federal income tax, and so forth. The basic average is that everyone making under $200,000 a year pays, on average about 40% of their incomes in taxes. Everyone making over $200,000 a year, on average, pays about 17% of their income in taxes.

There's plenty more here: http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/american_income_taxation.htm about the detailed breakdowns and some of the changes that have made things worse over the past decade or two, but its pretty easy to get buried in statistics. The 40% vs 17% is a good simple example.

[dkf]

18. This is the data from your link. It doesn't support your numbers.

1st Quintile 2nd Quintile 3rd Quintile 4th Quintile Next 15% Next 4% Top 1%
19.7% 23.3% 27.0% 29.8% 31.6% 32.2%
32.8%

[bhikkhu]

21. The 40% vs 17% refers to the cut-off between <200k vs >200k

rather than the division into quintiles. But then looking for the original source of that...perhaps I need to take it back - I can't find the link that it came from!

This is along the same lines, but doesn't divide up the same or come up with the same numbers: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0415/Taxes-and-the-rich-How-much-do-they-pay-now

...and then this is another one which addresses the problem pretty directly: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/04/15/the-400-richest-americans-and-their-terrible-tax-burden/

The basic thing is, if someone complains about how much more taxes the wealthy pay in comparison to the rest of us, they could just as easily complain about much more income the wealthy make, as they are taxed at lower effective rates than the rest of us when looking at "total tax burden".

I'll look for the original link and post it if I can find it...waiting for the kids to get up right now (Merry Christmas!)

[marybourg]

10. I used to pay about $4000/year

income tax on my retirement income. Since the Bush tax cuts I've paid 0 - $66 each year. Who is to blame for that? I guess I should be a repub. But I'm not.

[Major Nikon]

12. That is just Limbaughish bullshit, the same as 20% pay 80% of the taxes, etc.

Basically it's just something to give everyone a big shiny object to stare at instead of dealing with the reality of highly regressive overall taxes. When you start looking at the reality of who pays what taxes, Republicans are in big trouble and they know it. That's why they have to keep inventing this bullshit.

A big hunk of that "47%" are old people living on fixed incomes. The rest are working people who are too poor and overburdened with payroll taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, fuel taxes, vehicle taxes, and all the other highly regressive taxes they have to pay.

[BlueToTheBone]

13. That is such a red herring. What isn't paid in income tax is paid

in payroll tax...oh, right US the workers pay PAYROLL tax...we don't pay at the end of the year, we pay each pay check. They are such frauds and liars.

[taught_me_patience]

14. I believe everyone who files income taxes should pay a bit

because everybody benefits from things those taxes provide.

[applegrove]

15. I believe that figure includes children and poor seniors. More bull**** from the right.

[Stuart G]

20. Agreed, k and r

[CANDO]

22. Its not just the rich

The entire right wing spews that shit because they hear it repeated incessantly on their echo chamber news/talk propaganda shows.

[bemildred]

23. It sounds better than pointing out that 47% of us have no income. nt

[LiberalFighter]

24. For the 2011 tax year...

everyone has $3,700 personal exemption for each eligible person.
everyone in a household with married filing jointly has a standard deduction of $11,600
$5,800 if filing single or married separately


A family of four above would have a total of $26,400 income exempt from taxes. Not just the 47% that they say don't pay taxes but also the 53% that they say are bearing the tax burden (bullshit). About 28% of households have annual income under $27,000.

As a single person I will have a total of $9,200 of my income exempt from federal taxes. And then have the first $8,500 of taxable income taxed at 10%, the next $26,000 taxed at 15%. Last year my effective tax rate was about 10.5%.

Back to the family of four if they have only $26,400 in income and therefore not pay any federal taxes. A family with income of $200,000 would have at LEAST $26,400 of their income untaxed. Why LEAST? Because they are more likely to itemize their deductions and the average deductions for a family with $200k is $64,000. And they complain about 47% not paying taxes?

[CTyankee]

25. Clearly their children should be cleaning the schools.

That's take care of it!

[ErikJ]

26. The truth

1. Most of the RW usually say "47% pay NO taxes" which is off the bat crazy. They pay federal payroll and excise taxes. state and local income and sales taxes and fees of all sorts.

2. the 47% includes children, seniors and unemployed who dont work-but they still pay sales taxes!

3. Lots of people write off enough mortgage, medical and dependent deductions (and many more deductions) to zero out the taxable income. In fact 7000? millionaires have so many deductions they dont pay any fed income taxes.
So ask the middle class RWers who say this if they want to do away with all the deductions they are due.

[CTyankee]

30. when the repubs start agitating for the home mortgage interest deduction to be taken away, we might

gain some traction with the middle class moderate republican and the independents. Maybe then they will see what "class warfare" REALLY means. It will be like a bucket of cold water thrown in their faces...

[jwirr]

27. Because most of us are not working for them. We are elderly on Social Security, Disabled making

very little at work shops, children that Newt has not found a job for yet and the unemployed. These people do not make enough to pay income taxes. Oh, I also forgot the corporations that manage to pay nothing like GE.

[LiberalFighter]

31. Report: Rich-poor gap growing

Report: Rich-poor gap growing

The SSA said 50 percent of workers made less than $26,364 last year — and most Americans have fewer job opportunities available to them. But the wealthiest Americans are relatively unscathed, with those earning $1 million or more jumping 18 percent from 2009.


I wonder how many of these workers were the sole earners in the family?