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President Obama clueless about teachers’ tax rates.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  September 28th, 2011 at 08:02 PM  | 

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FactCheck puts it very succinctly:

President Obama’s claim that he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher making $50,000 a year isn’t true. A single taxpayer with $50,000 of income would have paid 11.9 percent in federal income taxes for 2010, while the Obamas paid more than twice that rate — 25.3 percent (and higher rates than that in 2009 and 2008). And if the $50,000-a-year teacher were in Obama’s tax situation — supporting a spouse and two children — he or she would have paid no federal income taxes at all.

What FactCheck is referring to is one of the President’s latest talking points: on at least two occasions in the last few days he’s said “I shouldn’t be paying a lower effective rate than a teacher, or a firefighter, or a construction worker” and “Somebody who’s making $50,000 a year as a teacher shouldn’t be paying a higher effective tax rate than somebody like myself”: obviously, this is complete nonsense.  It’s in fact at  Elizabeth Warren-levels of nonsense*  …but I am very surprised that the fact that the President’s spouting off said nonsense would apparently be a shocking revelation for, well, anyone.

After all, it’s not as if Barack Obama is particularly personally acquainted with a salary that low: his household income in 2000 was merely $240,505 (it went up fairly quickly after that*).  Law professorships likewise pay well, for those wondering about Obama’s previous career path; mind you, things could have been different twenty years ago, but I suspect that things weren’t that different.  Besides: the point here is that the President is not exactly what one could call familiar with the travails of Main Street economic reality, not least because fairly accurate stereotyping has his socioeconomic class spending ever so much time and effort avoiding Main Street like the plague.  Apparently middle-class, bourgeois mentality is contagious…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*You may remember her as being that academic goofball running for MA-SEN, while not really understanding that her tax ‘reform’ program would involve actually making the poor pay some.

**Legitimately enough: Senators are paid quite a bit, and Obama wrote a couple of best-selling books.

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  • Tbone

    to understand tax rates, and we certainly have no academic evidence to actually judge if he has the capacity to learn anything past basic, personal hygiene and he seems to cling to his ignorance like a religion, I’m pretty sure in this case that he is just plain lying.

  • fightnright

    ….saying that teachers *shouldn’t* be paying higher tax rates than he is, not *are* paying higher tax rates than he is (as Factcheck noted), we all learn why it is so difficult for anyone in a position of importance to take a chance and call the mouth-in-chief a liar.

    It’s a matter of the exact definition of what ‘is’, is.

    But how well this deliberately crafted bit of disinformation is carried from the airwaves across the country to millions of Obama-loving dummies who only read left-wing rags, and watch reality TV. Since far too many of them have never gone near a tax form in their lives, this bit of bs is as close to the real world as they’ll get.

    "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress or two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover," she said. "I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. … You want people who don’t worry about the next election." Beverly Perdue, NC Governor

    If you don’t believe that Democrats will do what they say, then don’t
    vote. But be warned: your 2016 vote may come too late. Vote Republican
    in 2012!

  • skorrent1

    “Income tax rate”. When it’s convenient, Dems have taken to including the 15% payroll tax as a “federal tax”, not an untouchable “insurance premium”. This bumps the teacher up to 26.9%, but hardly moves BO up at all. (Does the POTUS pay payroll tax anyway?) Remember, BO gives a “tax cut” by temporarily reducing payroll taxes. So, they finally admit that a tax is a tax is a tax.

  • sbm1

    I am sick and tired of these lawyers in politics…so, as a litmus test, I’ve picked lawyers and law school…have you attended one…not voting for you!

    Not sure how firm I will be on it…but it is keeping me from even considering Christie

  • bk

    It would take the base income tax rate for $50K (indexed for inflation each year afterward) and set that – with no deductions allowed – as the flat tax rate for everyone making over $250K. That gives Obama what he asked for, right? Republicans would most certainly support it.

  • johnt

    What’s holding all these people up? Obama and his new buddy, Warren Buffet can lead by example, assuming that someone will help O put the stamp on the envelope and Buffet will cease his years long fight with the IRS.
    The ocean of bull crap runs deep.

  • harlan

    o can and has consistently made any and every outrageous statement that an actual president could possibly make.

    To put it mildly, he is not an honest man.

    The lib media in effect says “fact check all you want, because we won’t report it”, and everyday Americans are too lazy, busy or oblivious to check for themselves.

  • holymoly

    That would be a huge increase to the capital gains tax. So no, I’m guessing that Republicans would not support it.

  • bk

    I’m going by Moe’s number of 12% above. If a millionaire could fire all his CPAs except one, who does the taxes in less than a day, by paying a flat rate of 12%, don’t you don’t think he’d go for it? I believe they currently are paying over 20% after taking whatever deductions they can. So regardless of what it means in terms of capital gains, it’s hard to see how it wouldn’t be a plus.

  • fightnright

    …lawyers are ubiquitous in politics as liberals are in Hollywood. And there are so few of them at the top who don’t have the words ‘Harvard’, or ‘Harvard Law’ in their CV’s.

    If it weren’t for the sterling exceptions like Mark Levin, I’d insert a few lawyer jokes here….

    "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress or two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover," she said. "I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. … You want people who don’t worry about the next election." Beverly Perdue, NC Governor

    If you don’t believe that Democrats will do what they say, then don’t
    vote. But be warned: your 2016 vote may not come at all. Vote Republican
    in 2012!

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    …payroll tax (and that they also looked at 2011 numbers), and Obama still ended up paying more.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    “…with a higher rate.”

    :)

  • vandalii

    Nothing says these wealthy folks like Obama can’t give more money than the IRS requires. The folks like Buffett and Michael Moore that insist they aren’t paying enough have no one to blame but themselves for not turning in more money to the gov’t (rather than giving it to bloated campaign coffers that do *no one* but the candidate any good).

    Since Mr. Obama receives healthy royalties for his books (that’s an assumption — not sure how well they’re selling now…), I wonder why he doesn’t have his Presidential Paycheck on automatic deposit with the FED or maybe just add his account number to the next TARP incarnation…

  • vandalii

    …to *source* the next TARP incarnation. I’m sure he already received some donations from “grateful” recipients of his bailouts, so needs to help fill in the hole he created in our national debt.