The U.S. Already Soaks the Rich In 2021 the richest 1% paid 45.8% of income taxes, up from..

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The U.S. Already Soaks the Rich
In 2021 the richest 1% paid 45.8% of income taxes, up from 33.2% in 2001.


And The Big Guy is running on his "I'll make the rich pay their fair share of income taxes" mantra. In fact it is one of those things he likes to lean over and whisper to make his point. He's gonna go after them and make them pay up and the left jumps to their feet in applause.

Yet he never says what is their fair share. Just as here when ask the answer is never given. And now we have the latest reporting period which omce again begs the question.

From the article

....President Biden is proposing a bevy of tax increases, and his State of the Union address included the familiar call for the wealthy to pay their “fair share.” He should examine the Internal Revenue Service data. Recently released figures for 2021 show that the top 1% of Americans reported 26.3% of the country’s adjusted gross income, while paying 45.8% of total income taxes.

Is this not a “fair share” to Mr. Biden? Then what would be? Democrats always deploy the language of fairness without defining it or answering those questions. The truth is that the income tax is already steeply progressive. The top 10% of earners in 2021 provided 75.8% of the revenue. (See the nearby bar chart.)..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-in...-tax-foundation-joe-biden-fair-share-3394355b

The numbers

Bottom 50% 10.4% of income 2.3% of taxes 3.4% rate
Between bottom half and top 25% 17.5% of income 8.4% of taxes 7.2% rate
Top 25% to 10% 19.5% of income 13.4% of taxes 10.3% rate
Top 10% to 5% 10.6% of income 10.2% of taxes 14.3% rate
Top 5% to 1% 15.7% of income 19.9% of taxes 18.9% rate
And top 1% 26.3% of income 45.8% of taxes 25.9% rate

So once again if you agree with Biden that the above does not represent tax fairness then post the numbers that should be our goal? What would finally be fair? How much MORE progressive would you make our already highly progressive tax system?

 

Hmmmmm this is going to be a MAJOR leftist campaign issue and not one can come and establish the red line in the sand where tax rates would become fair it seems.

I hope every time it is mention they are pointed here and asked to put money where mouth is.........

The crickets are deafening .

 

Include payroll taxes, this all evens out, a great deal.

 

First of all those are Contributions to a retirement system and Biden was talking income taxes and corporate income taxes. Under that system the lowest earners actual get a return on their contributions when they retire while those at the top who pay in the top amounts four and five times what the lower income groups pay in lose money and never make back what they pay in with an return

Second

It gets even worse when you add in payroll taxes and then the EITC in fact then the lower income groups MAKE money off the tax system. They have a negative net tax rate.

So again if Biden and the left says the above distribution is not "fair" then what should be the goal, what should the numbers be? How should the tax system be adjusted to attain this "fairness"?

 

So many of them lie about everything, so, I tend to be disinterested in their views until I hear something that makes sense.

We have a topic on the first page claiming that Bribed Joe 'cut' taxes, when government collections are up over 22% under Bribed Joe. How far can a discussion go with such folks?

 

A small bone of contention. You haven't listed even half of the actual taxes. Understand, inflation is a tax. In fact, it is a tax elected politicians don't even have to vote on. Let this sink in!

When Congress overspends what transpires? Let's say under the current tax schedule the government takes in $2.345 Trillion, but they spend $7 Trillion. There is no such thing as a free lunch in economics. The government has to come up with another $4.655T in its federal reserve Treasury account if their checks aren't to bounce. The Treasury issues $4.655T in US bonds. At the current yield and rate of inflation few are willing to buy the bonds at face value. The market places a discount rate on the bonds and few are willing to pay more than 15-20% of face value (due to inflation). The discount bonds get removed and sent to the Federal Reserve as the buyer of last resort. The Federal reserve increases the number inside their computer file indicating the balance for the US government Treasury account is now $4.655T larger. Essentially Congress has printed money in the process and increased the money supply and debt by $4.655T. This is why the debt has increased by $4.5T per year for the last 3 years and likely this year too. Within 4 years Biden's and the Congress' printing press will nearly double the national debt (not counting unfunded liabilities) to nearly $40T. This is why prices have doubled in less than 4 years. It is nothing more than a tax every American must pay every time they purchase groceries, a car, everything. It is nothing more than a tax they don't even have to vote on. If they print $5T, the cost of everything purchased will go up by a total of $5T. Simple as that.

Unfortunately, the percentage of this hidden tax is paid by the poor at a higher rate. This is because the rich have a much smaller percentage of their wealth in cash just sitting around. Most of their wealth is in Yachts, mansions, stocks, art, precious metals, jewelry, you name it. So they pay a much smaller inflation tax. It is the poor who get crushed by inflationary monetary policy. Inflation is caused IN ITS ENTIRETY by the governments monetary policy. When they print, we are taxed. There is no other influence on inflation other than the government printing money.

But it gets worse. Eventually once inflation impacts the economy, wages will eventually rise (2 years later). So the poor don't see wage increases until well after they get punished by inflation. When their wages eventually do rise, the same tax schedule places them in a higher tax bracket at a much higher rate. Again, all without having to even vote to increase your tax rate. If you have a retirement account worth $100,000 and they double prices (as Biden has done) they have essentially stolen half your retirement. Again without a vote. Eventually as inflation sets in (2 years later) the stocks in your portfolio will begin to rise (lagging). You then have to pay income tax on an increase which really wasn't an increase at all since it now has the same buying power (or less).

 

Mr. newly registered

As of December 31, 2020, the debt was at $27.748 Trillion

Source; Fiscal Data, Debt To The Penny

$27.748 Trillion X 2 = $55.5 trillion

Will you retract one statement you made that relates to Biden/Congress doubling the debt within 4 years.

 

don't forget to add on other schemes to soak the rich

1) the Death tax-the top one percent pay almost all the death tax
2) Medicare Part B premiums. the richest citizens max out on FICA payments and then when they are eligible for medicare Part B-not only do they have to pay a monthly premium, they are hit with another 400 or so dollar a month surcharge to pay for Obama care for those who don't have insurance. add those in and its over 50% of the income based taxes

 

Your problem here of course is that the left doesn't really give a rat's left butt cheek about what's fair. What they do understand is that they can pretty much count on 50.1% of morons to vote to rob the other 49.9% Never mind that there is absolutely nothing to be gained from everyone but the bureaucrats being poor.

 

The current US national debt is $34.6T. By the end of the year it will be nearly $40T.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

No, it doesn't.Top EARNERS pay a far higher percentage of their income as taxes than their income percentage.

 

Not so. The impact of the death tax has been most devastating against family farms. Land which has been in families for 100 or even 200 years has been confiscated when the father dies unexpectedly. The family not only loses their family patriarch, they find they owe half the value of their land in tax. Most of the super wealthy have ways around it. Trust funds.

 

Yeah I know that. but those who are hit by it are in the top one percent. Do you know who loves the death tax? the uber wealthy who want to see valuable property available for them to by and corporate farm operations. I don't deny your claim

I will tell you a story I know well. When the death tax was created, the idea was (other than to pander to class envy-a usual Democrat strategy) was to prevent people from getting "too wealthy" but the rates were designed say so a guy who was worth 100 Million and passed his estate to his children-that when those children died the family's worth was not much higher than 100 million. Doesn't always work that way

Let's go back to 1974. Two girls I know well, had just lost their last grandparent. the death tax took a bunch of the grand parent's money. The girls, in the back seat of their Parent's Porsche were driving on I 71 in Cincinnati when some loser decided to commit suicide driving a station wagon at 85 MPH southbound in the northbound lane. He survived. So did the two girls but both parents were DOA. So that family's estate got hit with the death tax TWICE in less than a year.

 

As I stated, as of December 31st, 2020, the national debt stood at $27.748 Trillion, X 2 = $55.5 Trillion, hence a 100% increase.

For your info, an increase from $27.748 Trillion to $40 Trillion within 4 years equates to a 45% increase.

You stated that Biden/Congress will nearly double the national debt within four years

Question: Is nearly doubling a number equates to a 45% increase?

 

Okay, whatever. Semantics. Not material to the point. The point is, merely looking at the amount of taxes taken in from the rich does not take into account HOW the government currently taxes. A majority of the taxes are derived through monetizing the debt. Biden is funding the government mostly by monetizing the debt. It is an inflation tax. About twice as much as it is funded through the tax code. The rich are DEFINITELY over taxed in regards to their income. So much so, there isn't much room for further increases. Perhaps even beyond maximum taxation. I say that because at a certain point increasing the tax rate brings in less revenue not more. They have to tax the middle and lower classes. But increasing taxes on the middle class and poor is a very unpopular policy. Using the printing press they can tax the poor and middle class without even having to vote or acknowledge they are doing it. Most people in these groups don't even understand what is being done to them. They don't understand the economics of it. They sense something is wrong. They know they can't seem to get ahead or catch a break. But identifying why, no. That is beyond most of their comprehension. So they vote Dem or Rep in a knee-jerk fashion based on their preconceived biases and nothing changes. They will keep getting screwed. That is my point.

The current rate of spending is just so far beyond anything rational. It is sickening what they are doing to the poor and the middle class.

 

Wow! 50% tax twice in such a brief period. 75% of the families wealth gone. The uber wealthy set up trust funds which aren't subject to the death tax. Land doesn't meet the liquidity requirements is the reason I am told.

 

Except you should be concerned with taxes, not income taxes, and you'll discover that the hyper rich pay a much lower percentage. Social Security alone is a higher percentage of the lower 75%'s taxes than the average Forbes 400 pays in total. In fact, nearly double.

 

If your lifestyle does not change then your taxes are not too high.

 

SS benefits are capped and therefore so is the amount you have to pay. The rich pay at a much much higher rate no matter how you look at it. SS is not a tax, it is a withholding and\or insurance. The cap is a benefit because this program is the worst retirement program in the history of mankind. So yes, anything to limit its impact is good. Regarding direct taxes the rich pay a ridiculous amount, both in total and rate. Under Biden, inflation is where most of the taxes are paid however, so it equals out a bit.

 

Did you know that the costs of avoidance of the death tax take more wealth than what the tax does? it's not only based on class envy, it's inefficient. Many of those trusts may preserve some of the estate but also many of them do cost the heirs a bunch. What most do is to give the maximum amount to their children each year they are alive and invest that but the amount is about 22K a year meaning over say a 45 year period the two parents can give about a million but if it is invested wisely it will be worth much more than that

I listened to a far left professor at Yale during my reunion who said that what really causes wealth inequality is not estates but what the parents can spend on the kids while the parents are alive. wealthy kids travel to foreign countries, get the best schools, sports coaches, cultural enlightenment and the connections that come from that, so he noted the estate tax is pretty worthless in slaking class envy or preventing inequality. HIS solution was for elite schools such as Yale, Harvard, etc to double the size of their classes. He noted that an average class size at Yale was 15 or so students in all but the big freshman lecture classes. He said doubling the class size would have almost no deleterious impact on the qualify of an IVY or Stanford etc education but the impact it would have on society would be immense

 

I have corrected your objectively false claims on this issue many times. You just repeat them.

No, that claim is objectively false. You have made that objectively false claim many times. I and others have proved it objectively false many times. No matter how many times we prove it objectively false, you just repeat it. Why do you repeat objectively false claims that you have seen proved objectively false many times?

I repeat again: no honest person has ever tried to pretend that "the rich" are defined by their incomes rather than their wealth. The measure of wealth is wealth -- assets or net worth -- not income. If the rich were defined by their incomes, a billionaire with no income would be poor. But a billionaire with no income is not poor. He is rich. Therefore, your claim is objectively false.

Moreover, the federal income tax, which is the basis of your objectively false claim, is not all "income taxes" let alone all "taxes." The federal income tax is specifically designed to be progressive in order to make the overall tax system fairer and less burdensome to honest working people. You merely prefer a tax system that minimizes how much the richest are asked to repay of the subsidies they receive at taxpayer expense, and forces honest working people into poverty and destitution. You prefer such a tax system because you believe injustice is better than justice and evil is better than good.

Which means they are if anything wildly undertaxed, because their exorbitantly inflated incomes consist almost entirely of the rents of government-issued and -enforced privileges like land titles, IP monopolies, bank licenses, oil and mineral rights, broadcast spectrum allocations, etc. You merely prefer a tax system that ensures that rich, greedy, privileged parasites are exorbitantly subsidized at the expense of honest working people.

There is no such thing as a fair share of income tax because income tax is inherently unjust. All we can say for sure is that the higher a person's income, the more of it is likely obtained by privilege rather than any commensurate contribution to production. The fact that the top 1% of income recipients get more than 1/4 of all the income shows that they are being exorbitantly over-subsidized, and should rightly be repaying even more of the subsidies they receive. The problem with very high rates of income tax is that the recipients just find ways to receive their income in forms that are not taxable.

No, those are all outright falsehoods that you have repeated many times. The percent of federal income tax is not the percent of "taxes." There are many taxes, most of which are regressive and burden honest working people far more than the rich and privileged.

Only the income tax is progressive, not the tax system. The overall tax system takes very similar percentages of income from all income quintiles, and is highly regressive relative to ability to pay (i.e., wealth). The fraction of one's wealth that is paid in tax each year declines steeply as wealth increases. The richest pay a low single-digit percent of their wealth (assets or net worth) each year in total taxes, while the poorest pay several times their assets in taxes like sales tax, excise tax, etc. Measured that way, which is certainly more reasonable, the total tax burden on the poorest is hundreds of times greater than the burden on the richest.

 

Well yeah, but that's because Social Security is capped out to a max payment. If the rich were paying more, they would be collecting more, a lot more.

 

The Trump tax cuts are set to expire in 2025 so Biden doesn't have to do anything and he gets his tax increase.

 

FY 1997, Gingrich & Co. balanced the budget with RECEIPTS at 18.7% to GDP

GDP; $8.451 Trillion
Total receipts; $1.579 Trillion
$1.579T/$8.451 = 18.7%

FY 1997 Individual Income Taxes; $737.5 Billion
Individual Income Taxes as a percentage of GDP; $737.5B/$8.451T = 8.73%

Sources;

OMB Historical Tables

Monthly Treasury Statement, FY 1997/September 30th, 1997

________________

FY 2023/September 30th, 2023

Receipts as a percentage of GDP; 16.5%
Total Receipts; $4.441 Trillion
GDP; $26.982 Trillion
Individual income taxes; $2.176 Trillion, as a percentage of GDP; 8.06%

Sources;

OMB Historical Tables
Monthly Treasury Statement, FY 2023/September 30th, 2023

NOTE; Several years ago, I predicted that our receipts as a percentage of GDP would eventually go back to a mid 16%, and I was right!

Trump’s post tax cuts RECEIPTS as a percentage of GDP;

FY2018; 16.3%
FY2019; 16.3%
FY2020; 16.1%……however, irrelevant due to an abnormal year.

Main reason; IMO, Trump’s tax cuts were too steep.

___________

Summary;

Gingrich & Co. FY1997 income tax receipts as a percentage of GDP; 8.73%

FY 2023 income tax receipts as a percentage of GDP; 8.06%

8.73% - 8.06% equates to “a significant difference” of 0.67%, and here’s why;

FY2023 GDP; $26.983 Trillion X 0.67% equates to an extra $180 billion in revenues.

NOW, if we were to assume that Gingrich & Co. 1997’s income tax rates/brackets were FAIR, then today, which group of taxpayers, and/or several groups aren’t paying their fair share?

 

Bravo!

However, same as the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the Dems will want to make our current tax rates permanent for people earning less than X hundred thousands.