wow – just today I was thinking the exact same thing about fairness; that it is something immeasurable, incalculable, and ultimately impossible to achieve because it is based purely on a person’s perception of what is “fair”.

An insistence on “fairness” in society will only facilitate equal suffering, not equal opportunity. It especially won’t provide “equal protection under the law” for the inherent rights of the public.

Income taxes have become (and maybe this was the design from “go”) merely a means of control; a bartering tool for the perpetual candidates that occupy the various vestibules of self-serving narcissistic self-preservation in Washington.

The last guy I saw really take on the entire tax code “head-on” was Herman Cain…. We all saw how that went down.

all look alike?

Shouldn’t I be able to sing like Whitnely Houston could?

Or jump like Michael Jordan?

Or speak as well as Obama?

You really think tax rate decreases do not appeal to those who really pay taxes? And that tax payers sign their IRS forms thinking they are contributing to fairness?

There are certain issues on which conservatism has a significant messaging problem. Yapping about how 47% doesn’t pay income taxes is really bad messaging.

People pay taxes and think of themselves as paying taxes even if they are aren’t paying any net taxes. Heck, if you include entitlements (i.e. seniors who are now collecting more in SS and Medicare then they paid in), we are already far above the 50% threshold of no return.

How we communicate matters. Telling citizens to eat their spinnach and like it is not an effective marketing campaign.

I’m a liberal and a Democrat, and I work in academia, so I’m pretty much surrounded by liberals and Democrats. I don’t know a single person, though, who thinks taxes are good. Rather, we think taxes are less bad than cutting the things that people are proposing to cut to be able to afford lower taxes.

Would I like lower taxes? Sure, but what gets put on the chopping block to pay for them? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the EPA? No thanks then. I imagine that even the average Occupier would grant you that all other things being equal, lower taxes are better than higher taxes. It’s the idea of cutting spending that they like in order to cut taxes that makes them mad.

In sum, I think your job is to convince people that the things that you want to cut aren’t worth their cost in taxes, not just that taxes are bad. It’s a more difficult project, but it’s the only way I see fiscal conservatives making new converts.

When you include the user fees (gas taxes and car registration), sales taxes, property taxes, insurance premium-like taxes (SS and Medicare) people pay a considerable amount in taxes. When we ignore that while talking about how unfair it is for the rich to pay more federal income taxes, they think the following: the rich are trying to increase taxes on us.

I certainly hope that the statistics are available to compare things like how much of our money we got to keep in the past versus today utilizing income versus taxes at all levels.

What I fear is that if we can gather that info by broad income (including benefits from government), someone doing the analysis can find a way to get “fair” back into the discussion by showing that, under a certain set of assumptions, the taxes are regressive.

I say that, because I hear the incorrect statement all the time that SS taxes are regressive, which is absolutely wrong when you, appropriately, include the benefits in the calculation.

What kind of analysis do you think is available that would further teaching all of us how bad taxes are?

is the easiest way to get people to eat their Spinach. If every one was required to set aside 10% to 14%,. the 47% of the people who pay no income taxes currently will still be the most offended but we all benefit from each enumerated duty that we require from the Government; therefore, the only *fair* share is if we each pay the same rate and nobody gets penalized for earning more or less than the average wage earner.

Keep all the existing deductions, but .. the minimum owed remains the “floor”.

Set the “floor” at, say, 1%.

Someone earns $ 10,000 .. the floor tax is $100, and they pay it.
Note – the EITC is *larger* than $100 so they’re still coming out ahead.

Someone earns $ 100,000 but has a lot of deductions … they can’t reduce their taxes owed below $1000.

Someone earns $1,000,000 … is paying at least $10,000.

Has the advantage of a nice “Soak the rich!” hook .. but what it really does is to spread the burden a *lot* more evenly.

Mew

thanks for taking so much time to write such a detailed and thoughtful post.

Second, I agree with your base premise, assuming I am right in that it is: Scolding someone as a leach and expecting them to come to your POV is futile and silly.

Third, I have one request for clarification and/or counter. You seem to posit that it is us conservatives in the 53% of tax payers and the left in the 47% of non-tax payers (fed income tax). If so, I don’t think that is remotely accurate. Obviously lots of people on the left make enough money to pay fed income tax. Thinking of the people I know, I think every lefty I know would be one (thinking of 10+ people off the top of my head). Instead I would say some amount of the 47% of non-payers are not committed leftists, indeed aren’t even political. Those people are up for grabs in this debate, and it is us and the left fighting for them. Am I right(ish)?

Problem is that the people that we need to reach are not rational. (They only know that when there free cell phone runs out of minutes that at the start of the next month, more minutes appear.) Of course most people are for lower taxes just as long as their particular part of the pie is not endangered.

(Note: it’s federal income taxes, not all income taxes. Also, it’s not 47% of the country: it’s 47% of those filing tax returns, which are two very different things.)

Have you done the research to find out who make up the 47% and why they don’t owe federal income taxes? I’m glad that you’re not tarring everybody with the same brush, but nonetheless you need to understand how it breaks down to address the problem.

The EITC is a big part of the explanation. But before you get angry about that, it’s primarily a Reagan program and entirely a Republican program. Ford created it, Reagan vastly expanded it, and GWB increased the child credit portion considerably.

I can give you a fair amount of information about this, which is not derived from blogs but, rather, by original sources, but I’m loathe to take the time if the response is going to be “shoot the messenger.”

Here’s a scary thought. I’ve been a taxpayer all of the time since 1992, when I joined the Navy. Prior to that much of the time i was working, but in the 47%. When I got out, I had electronics training, and 15 years of experience in the field, and was able to get a truely decent job. As a taxpayer, i was paying for that ‘social safety net’. Please consider that, anyone who’s about to yell and scream hypocrite at me for my revelation here.

I was laid off from my job where I was recieving 60K/yr. Rather than watch my wife and son go hungry and without health insureance, i decided to avail myself of what I’ve been paying for for all these other people all these years, and went to Social Services and signed up for whatever I could qualify for. I didn’t get any cash assistance, because my $430/week (Maryland’s maximum unemployment benefit) disqualified me (my rent alone is $1239/mo).
I DID qualify for $160/mo in foodstamps (an “independance card” ever notice the liberals name programs for what they DEPRIVE you of?) and Medicaid (my son has ADHD with aggressive behavior, and my wife has clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and chronic pain issues). I took her to the Doctor yesterday and gave them my new insurance card. I asked what the co-pay was, (used to be $20 to see primary card provider, and $40 to see a speciallist) I was told the NO copay! then I went to pick up the prescribed medications, and asked what the cost was, I used to have prescription coverage at my work and paid $5 per scrip to get them filled. I was told $1!

I can’t make ends meet on $430/wk + $160/mo for groceries, but I CAN see where to some folks it would seem like crack! If I was only qualified to work at a minimum wage job to start with, it would be highly tempting to do as much work ‘off the books’ as possible (not saying I WOULD, but acknowleging temptation) to keep from derailing the gravy train. Why work ‘on the books’ and pay a LOT of money for benefits that are LESS than what I recieve for “free” (notice the quotation marks, i’m not saying they’re free, just in my case they only cost swallowing my pride to accept help that I’ve been paying for for all the shiftless folks who LIVE on this crap!) We need to, at a bare minimum shrink the social safety net, so it less resembles a nice comfy hammock!

Let’s paint a picture:

A person makes $1 million per year, $600 thousand of which are capital gains. They also have a 40% savings (investments included) rate. So they wind up paying 1.5% of their income to payroll taxes (assuming they are self-employed and pay the whole payroll tax themselves, it would be .75% if they are employed). Let’s assume that he pays the top marginal rate on all of his non-investment income, so that would come to 14% of his total income. Let’s assume that he pays the top marginal Capital Gains rate, which would lead to him paying 9% of his total income on capital gains rate. Let’s assume he lives in a state with no income tax (hard to account for 50 states ya know) and a sales tax of 7%., and he winds up paying 4.2% of his income as sales tax. That comes to a total of 28.7% for his effective tax rate if he is self-employed (27.95% if he is employed by someone else). If he has any tax deductions from his taxes (which I did not take into account), that would lead to a decrease in his overall tax rate (by as much as 2 percentage points!!)

Now, another person makes $30 thousand per year with no capital gains. They don’t have a noticeable amount of money to save or invest, so their savings rate is less than 1%. They would pay 15% of their income to payroll taxes (if they are self-employed, 7.5% otherwise) and close to 7% of his income in sales taxes. We are assuming that he pays no federal income tax) That brings his effective tax rate to 22% if he is self-employed or 14.5% of his income if he is employed by someone else. Since he pays no income taxes, deductions don’t matter for him.

This does not include property taxes because that varies too much from state to state. I will say that if you believe that renters don’t pay property tax, then you need to read an economics book.

Now, you may say, “Those are the same rates at all!!” However, this shows that not only are the 47% taxed. they are taxed at a similar rate to the 53%!

so long as every group pays something above a set wage level. Problem with any model at this point is if its revenue negative then it takes longer to break even but more cash flow stimulates the economy assuming many at each income level will spend more money except for the upper 5% most of whom are able to save more than they earn with ease ……..except Warren Buffett who lives like he’s poor while acting like he’s not. Buffett made billions manipulating outcomes in markets and with DC decisions he supported.

Let the poor pay 4%, middle class 7% and the rich pay 15%. It won’t be fair to some but it will free up capital to many 57 percenters who carry the weight for the 43% whom liberals think are needing in more entitlements. And the 43% have to pay something. Sales taxes, etc……. isn’t enough considering the liberal waste that killed every budget since FDR was president.

4 words: Combat Zone Tax Exemption.

They are paying whenever gas taxes are increased. They are paying whenever someone puts a sin tax on smoking. They are paying whenever the producer has to add on to the cost of a product to pay his taxes. They are paying when capital is not invested and they have no job. People just need to be educated about the realities. The scraps the government feeds you does not make up for what is lost.