I guess this is the political game. Reach out and let everyone know you’re going to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, but then close all the “loopholes” – in other words eliminate deductions for many expenses – to ensure the overall tax burden of corporations goes up.
Yup, the rich do not pay enough taxes. Well Secretary of State Clinton, since you think that way, may I suggest you and your husband cut a check and pay extra local, state and federal taxes immediately. There is nothing stopping you from paying more, but you won’t do it … and you know it.
I’ve gotten a few requests to post or send out the story of the progressive lunch. Here it is. It’s been around for quite some time, but it’s still relevant … you can’t screw the people who are pulling the cart.
Last week, I wrote about the astroturfed protest by thousands of union employees at the Illinois capital. They were demanding a tax increase – for the children of course – that would amount to a 33 percent increase in the state income tax. This short video sums up what they want.
The federal government has floated another trial balloon reminding American’s we’ve got some serious obligations to pay out in the next few years. They seem to be softening everyone up for tax increases and entitlement cuts.
Is the Associated Press just realizing this fact? I wrote about this in 2008 and Rush Limbaugh has had the information on his home page forever. We really are spreading the wealth around when it comes to the federal tax burden in the United States.
A caller on Friday’s show asked an interesting question about confiscating all income made by people earning more than $1 million in this country. I believe his question was, if that were done, how long could the government operate?
It should come as no great surprise that the answer is, not long. I can’t brake it down into days, but thanks to a marvelous editorial entitled “The 2% Illusion” in the February 26, 2009 Wall Street Journal, I can give you an idea. For those of you who think that this country’s economic woes would be solved if we just raised the taxes on the wealthy, please, think again, and read the entire editorial.
The last year for which statistics are available is 2006, significant in the fact that times were good, the economy was rolling, and those “evil” Wall Street financiers that we are now told to hate were making millions. According to that article, had the federal government taken all of the taxable income of all of the income taxpayers earning over $500,000, (no typo, that’s a half a million) the federal government would have only taken in an extra $1.3 trillion. Translation: that is less than one half of the 2006 federal budget, or, using another point of reference, not even close to the amount of money necessary to cover the cost of the first two spending bills passed by Congress this year.
The article took the analysis further, though. So if the above statistic doesn’t scare you, what follows will. This administration plans to spend more than $4 trillion in fiscal 2010.
Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.
Hopefully, these statistics demonstrate that what we are hearing from this administration is either folly, or a flat out misrepresentation of the facts. Raising taxes on the “wealthiest” 2% of Americans will not, as the President claims, pay for his agenda, even if the government took 100% of their taxable income. Given that indisputable fact, where do you think the money will come from? If you guessed every man, woman and child in this country for generations to come, once again, go to the head of the class.
I understand Limbaugh’s situation is an individual case, but when you target high-wage earners with putative income taxes, those high-wage earners have the ability to work somewhere else. And sometimes they do. Read more
Are you better off than you were four years ago? It’s a question asked at Obama campaign events, and I’ve been thinking about different ways one can answer the question. We can measure economic success a number of ways – housing costs, gas prices, energy bills, retirement account balances and net worth are all measurable, as is the most thought of indicator, income.
Another – more unique – indicator of economic success during the last four years would be federal tax revenue collected. If you’ve been listening to Obama and the main stream media, we’re in the midst of the worst economy since the Great Depression where corporations get undeserved tax breaks, and the middle class have been screwed. They say the Bush tax cuts have failed, but what’s really failed is fiscal responsibility. Revenue is way up, spending is out of control.
If we’re in a terribly bad economy, I have only one question. How the heck did this happen?
Yes, I do understand that many families are having a tough time, but to compare today’s economy to the Great Depression is just wrong. Ask those who lived through it.
O’Biden and company are lying. Democrats have been pulling this stunt for years. The rally calls soundgood, and voters seem to be smitten with not necessarily class warfare, but corporation warfare.
Note the outright hatred towards companies like ExxonMobil [NYSE:XOM] with a net profit margin of 9.21 percent during the last year, and the pure love for companies like Apple [NASDAQ:AAPL] with a net profit margin of 14.88 percent.
So, we know what’s happened to the total net collected, how about the amount collected from corporations?
Well, it has doubled. In 2004, IRS data shows that the federal government collected about $185 billion from corporations and in 2007 the total grew 50 percent to more than $368 billion dollars.
Individual tax payers also paid more taxes during the last four years. Individual federal income taxes collected increased 32 percent from about $763 billion to more than $1.11 trillion.
But what about the tax burden of individuals as compared to corporations? I’ve created a detailed spreadsheet with federal tax revenue information for 1995 through 2007, the most recent data available. This spreadsheet has two tabs, and in the second tab titled percentages, you’ll be able to see how the tax burden changes between the individual and the corporations.
Between 1995 and 2001, corporations were paying less taxes – as a percentage – compared to individual filers. In 1995, corporations were paying about 21 percent of federal revenue collected, and by 2001 that percentage was down to 13.3 percent. In 2001, individuals were paying 86.7 percent of the taxes collected.
The first row is the corporation contributions and the second row is individual contributions. With the Bush tax cuts came a significant change. Within four years the trend had completely reversed back to 1995 levels. By 2007, corporations were contributing one quarter of the federal take.
Two things happened after the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. First, the total percentage of tax burden immediately shifted towards corporations after 2001 and second, the federal government started collecting more money after 2003.
If the federal government lowered taxes for everyone who paid taxes and still collected more money, it must be that we are doing better – when it comes to personal income – as compared to four, and even eight, years ago.
Finally, why are the rich being asked to be patriotic and pay more income taxes? Why are the successful always punished, while the federal government is never asked to do with less.
Note: You should research the data yourself. It was double sourced at a non-government Web site and IRS.gov. This Microsoft Excel spreadsheet – with two tabs – was created by the author to “clean up” the data provided at the IRS statistics Web site to make it more readable.
(Note that this article was originally posted on Nov. 1, 2008)
Well come on … who do you think? Oh … and we finally have that “Get Out Of Jail Free” Card. Yea! Read more