The top 1%

...aaaaand what is the response you're going for here? Are you baiting for for someone to respond the percentage of total taxes paid by the top 1%? It's okay, just go ahead and pretend someone took your bait.

At least they own it.

Someone at the Board of Trade is getting cheeky with the Occupy Chicago protests.

Why do you support the top 1%? Are you insane?

The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008,  Forgot that little bit of info, didn't we! 

Not at all. They should pay more, a lot more. Their taxes are the lowest since Truman was President, yet they fail to create jobs or contribute their fair share to the economy. Why do they and you hate America and want to destroy it? Why do you defend them? You must be insane.

Come on interventor....they need to pay at least 90% of the taxes....Jimi needs a new X-box!!!!

This battle on taxes has gone on for a century. The richest pay a larger percentage of the taxes paid than under Truman, or others when the rates are extremely high.  The lefties never mention that.  I'd rather pluck the goose prudently and get more down, than kill the critter -- to paraphrase Talleyrand. 

When the tax rates go orbital, the rich retreat into tax free state bonds and munies.  Then, the tax revenue drops quickly. 

This is simply not true.

And you need a brain transplant. What a nitwit!

Hardly. However the indicators point toward your apparent tenuous grasp on sanity, Q.E.D.

Jimi... I knew better than to expect a real response, but it was a challenge not an order. I knew that inflated idea you have of your intelligence could not stand the scrutiny, and you would have to find a way to "decline" the challenge. You are sadly pathetic.

Sorry, but your opinion is meaningless.

When you want your balloon to be bigger than anybody else's, you have to pay more for the extra helium.

That makes about as much sense as "I need to wash my car ... the dog needs a new food bowl!!!!"

Whatever the reason (everybody else bombed out; America had the best innovation), there were more people with good-paying jobs, then more besides the rich can pay taxes.

When you have so many people at the poverty line, and so many more with just their nose hairs above the water line, you have to go where the money is. 

http://j-walkblog.com/index.ph.../posts/Middle_Class/

Actually you usually have to apply yourself and work hard to succeed.  One question how much is enough for someone to have to pay percentage wise in taxes?

Actually, that's not true.

I saw a job opening for a security guard at $10 per hour. He could work 40 hours per week all year long and barely clear $20,000 for the year. A real estate salesperson can play tour guide for three weeks, sell a $300,000 house (there are more than a few around here) and pocket $18,000. 

Who actually "worked harder" for roughly the same amount of money?

 As far as taxes: You make a lot, you pay a lot. You make a little, you pay a little. If you couldn't pay for the basic necessities of life if you had to shell out for taxes, you don't pay anything.

Remember, income taxes aren't the only taxes you pay. If you go to the grocery store around here, you are already in the 9% (sales) tax bracket. 

If you are the security guard making $10,000 per year and spend $100 per week on groceries, that makes up 25% of your income. If you make $250,000 a year and spend $500 per week on groceries, that makes up 10% of your income. 

It's not how much you make that should determine your taxes, either. It's how much you have left after buying the necessities of life. 

You can buy that yacht or that jet after you pay your taxes. 

The security guard should have worked his way through college like I did and chose a career that paid more.  Look it took me 10 yrs to work my way through college while working full time and now I enjoy the fruits of my labor and most anyone else can also do the same.  Who determines what the necessities of life are, you?   Do you really support stealing someones income just because "you" think they have too much left over after your determination of the necessities of life?   I already pay 33% and as you pointed out other taxes or fees push that to over 50% total taxes/fees to the Government and yes I think that is enough.

Well sure, if you are buying the helium. However, if you have your own methods for producing helium, they why should you have to pay for helium you produce? I mean since we are using allegory, then in this case there is no finite amount of helium and can be continually produced such that it is not a "zero sum" situation. In other words, just because I have more does not mean that anyone else has less or the potential for less. That being established, efforts to bring punitive actions against those who would produce their own 'helium' is a foul misuse of the law, stare decisis notwithstanding.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

As a matter of fact, I do, and you know it. Why do you lie about it?

From your site link prop.

Translation: Jimi couldn't meet the challenge, because he cannot bear truth.

And it has been this way since income tax began. Why are you so in-American? How do you propose that we build roads, schools, military bases, firehouses, airports, prisons, etc?

Un-American?

You mean Biden's 'It's patriotic to pay taxes'?

If Obama would cut the size of government instead of increasing it and having multiple areas doing the same jobs, the government would have more money. Liberals complain about earmarks, but that is what states use to build those bridges, hospitals, schools, etc. so it seems to me that liberals want that 1% taxed at 90%, then that money will be used to pay off the labor bosses so they can overcharge the state to build those schools and brides, etc.

Obama compared himself to RR again the other day:

"Now, some Republicans in Congress, they’re already dusting off the old -- their old records. “That’s class warfare.” Let me tell you something, 26 years ago -- some of you may have seen this on television, clips have been circulating -- 26 years ago, another President said that some of these tax loopholes, and I quote, “made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it.” That was 26 years ago. You know the name of that President? Ronald Reagan.

Problem is, RR cut the tax rate for the upper level by almost 50%, and closed some loopholes. The most socialist president should not compare himself to the most conservative.

The top tax rate was lowered from 50% to 28% while the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%. Many lower level tax brackets were consolidated, and the upper income level of the bottom rate (married filing jointly) was increased from $5,720/year to $29,750/year. This package ultimately consolidated tax brackets from fifteen levels of income to four levels of income.^[1] This would be the only time in the history of the U.S. income tax (which dates back to the passage of the Revenue Act of 1862) that the top rate was reduced and the bottom rate increased concomitantly. In addition, capital gains faced the same tax rate as ordinary income.

When the federal income tax was enacted in 1913, the top rate was just 7 percent. By the end of World War I, rates had been greatly increased at all income levels, with the top rate jacked up to 77 percent (for income over $1 million). After five years of very high tax rates, rates were cut sharply under the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926. The combined top marginal normal and surtax rate fell from 73 percent to 58 percent in 1922, and then to 50 percent in 1923 (income over $200,000). In 1924, the top tax rate fell to 46 percent (income over $500,000). The top rate was just 25 percent (income over $100,000) from 1925 to 1928, and then fell to 24 percent in 1929.

Secretary Mellon knew that high tax rates caused the tax base to contract and that lower rates would boost economic growth. In 1924, Mellon noted: "The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business." He received strong support from President Coolidge, who argued that "the wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success but to create conditions under which every one will have a better chance to be successful."

The Effects of the Mellon Tax Cuts

It is often assumed that broad cuts in income tax rates only benefit the rich and thrust a larger share of the tax burden on the poor. But detailed Internal Revenue Service data show that the across-the-board rate cuts of the early 1920s-including large cuts at the top end-resulted in greater tax payments and a larger tax share paid by those with high incomes. Figure 1 focuses on those earning more than $100,000. As the marginal tax rate on those high-income earners was cut sharply from 60 percent or more (to a maximum of 73 percent) to just 25 percent, taxes paid by that group soared from roughly $300 million to $700 million per year. The share of overall income taxes paid by the group rose from about one-third in the early 1920s to almost two-thirds by the late 1920s. (Note that inflation was virtually zero between 1922 and 1930, thus the tax amounts shown for that period are essentially real changes).

The tax cuts allowed the U.S. economy to grow rapidly during the mid- and late-1920s. Between 1922 and 1929, real gross national product grew at an annual average rate of 4.7 percent and the unemployment rate fell from 6.7 percent to 3.2 percent. The Mellon tax cuts restored incentives to work, save, and invest, and discouraged the use of tax shelters.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3015

"In 1924, Mellon noted: "The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business." 

Like I said, the wealth placed their funds in state and munie tax free bonds when confronted with extremely large tax rates.  Yet, again, another example of tax rates dropping and tax revenues growing.  A relationship the regressives can neither understand, not fathom.

They may use the Darwin fish, but their economic ideas are faith based. 

Faith based practice is good when applied to religion.  Not so much, when applied to science and economics.

Q: Isn't it poor people who aren't paying?

A: No, at least not them alone. A Free Press analysis of IRS data shows that, in 1996, people with incomes of less than $30,000 made up 99.5% of all the nontaxable returns. In 2009, that group made up 76% of those returns. On the other hand, people making more than $30,000 went from less than 1% of nontaxable returns in 1996 to 17% in 2009.

Q: But $30,000's not a big income — is most of that growth among nonpayers coming near the bottom of that scale?

A: Much of it is — the number of nontaxable returns for filers with incomes of $30,000-$40,000 went from about 85,000 — about a third of 1% of the total — to 4.8 million, or 8% of the total, by 2009. That's an increase of more than 5,000%. (By way of comparison, the overall number of tax returns went up by about 17%, and the total number of nontaxable returns doubled in that time.)

But the percentage increase was even bigger for higher wage earners. Nontaxable returns from people with income between $75,000 and $100,000 went from 4,025 in 1996 to 476,624 in 2009 — an increase of almost 12,000%. More than 1,400 millionaires didn't pay income taxes in 2009, either.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/...onpayment/50676912/1

Why not just limit the loophole that allows people like Warren Buffet to take the bulk of their income as cap gains? WB only pays himself a $100k salary per year and takes everything else in cap gains which is why is effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's. Of course no one ever mentions lowering the secretary's tax burden, which I would also be in favor of.

Equalizing cap gains and income rates is the so-called Reagan Rule, which generated a long thread on this forum in the last few days. 

The Repubes dont want the kind of economy that Reagan created with his economic policies.  Go figure!?!

We could close tax loopholes, cut our corporate tax rate to make it competitive, and stop spending money on stupid wars and we would be in much better shape IMO.

Who says we don't?  Reagan came into a different set of circumstances, but I would be glad to try his ideas again. If you are going to use 'Repubes', I'm going to start using DimocRATS.

You dont want low taxes, a huge deficit and a tripling of the national debt?

The 99%'s are waiting for the trickle to start....any day now.

From everything I've read about that park where the "99" Protestors a holed up, there is far more than a trickle going on there judging by the smell. You can bet that is exactly what will be running downhill if these useful idiots ever really get in charge.

Ok here is reality and you will have to face this when you grow up, get a job and move out of your parents house.

I am a married hourly worker with one dependant employed by a corporation and I fall in the 33% income tax bracket of 212,000 - 379,000.  I only get paid a salary so no hiding any income or stock options etc. and the deductions available to me a spelled out on the IRS form 1040 Schedule A.

First you try to lower your taxable income by investing into a retirement savings plan which is limited to around 15,000 a year if you are less than 52 and then you can contribute more.  Then you take deductions which for me are pretty much limited to filing jointly, one dependent, union dues, any uniform expenses, charitable contributions and mortgage interest which is not much in my case as I live well within my means and have a low interest rate.

So tell me where I can do anything legally to significantly lower my tax rate.  Other than quit my job!