Wouldn't want this one to get lost in the shuffle. The GOP is trying for a goodbye gift to the rich, because they know this is the last time they'll be in power for awhile. Average annual tax break for households making over $450,000/year: $67,000 Average tax break for everybody else: $500 Amount added to national debt: $400 billion BigSoccer users supporting a GOP candidate for President for fiscal reasons: priceless
And he is still sticking to his claims that the budget will balance by 2012...which the CBO says is false. from the WSJ...in order for the 2012 balanced budget to happen...
FYP. Bush and a GOP Congress had complete control and worked in total harmony on all of this, hence the record service without a veto. I know you plan on ignoring this fact when you pull the GOP lever for more of the same.
So what was the excuse last year? So what will be the excuse this year? And is the guy that I am voting for a fan of Bush's budgets or not? Thanks for playing.
Excellent. Now tell us what the average tax payment is for someone that makes over $450,000, as well as the average tax payment of everybody else, and we can have a discussion.
Well if they are in the highest tax bracket, I recall bush saying no one should have to pay more than 1/3 of their wages in taxes when he proposed his tax cuts, so that would be $148,500. How many people making $450,000 actually pay that much do you think? My bet is not many. If they actually do pay that much in taxes, the 67,000 would be an over 45% tax break.
Every Fortune 500 CEO in the country pays a lower total tax rate than his/her secretary. That's a fact. Now where's your discussion?
What is the total tax payment. Tax "breaks" are given to people that pay taxes. You pay a lot of money, you get a tax break and some of it comes back.
That doesn't prove squat. Even if somone truly believed Buffet would pay (and I'm sure he would come up with some way to figgure the generic term "tax rate" so he would not have to pay), how exactly would anybody get the personal tax information necessary to prove it? One of these secretaries should take out a huge mortgage and then get the CEO to slash their salary, so their mortgage interest would wipe out their entire earnings and guarantee themselves the million from Buffet!
Are you playing an idiot on purpose? It's pretty easy to do the numbers and determine that someone earning $50K/year pays a higher rate in total taxes than someone earning $1 million/year.
So I'd assume it includes the other half of his secretary's and all of his other employees FICA and Medicare as well. It would be interesting to find out but I don't think the gap is as big as you assume it is or existant at all when ALL taxes are taken into account. Matter of fact, I would think that any F500 CEO is responsible for more taxes than they make in a year.
Sure it does. A CEO of a F500 comapny is responsible for the payment of half of the FICA and Medicare tax due to the IRS for each employee. In a 30,000 person company that could add up to more than that CEO's salary alone.
Well, as Matt points out this is no simple task. It will be completely dependent on the way the CEO and the Secretary behave, especially the CEO. They have lots of options to either invest in ways to shelter their money from taxes or go high risk and hope that the extra earnings will overcome the increased tax burden. If you just do income taxes (becaue the only thing you are seperating these two people on is their income), if a single taxpayer makes a million dollars and doesn't do anything to shelter their income from taxes their estemated income tax would be: $101,469.25 plus 35% of the amount over 349,700. or 32.9% The income tax on $50,000 would be: $4,386.25 plus 25% of the amount over 31,850 or 17.9& http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=164272,00.html Of course the payroll taxes will hit the $50,000 a year earner harder on a percentage wise basis, but the benifits that they can potentially receive from these programs would also help them much more on a percentage wise basis. I'm sure if you asked the millionaire and the 50k earner which one would prefer to see you do away with these federal program, and the tax burden that comes along with them, the millionaire would say sure, and the 50K earner would say, no way.