Save the Rich, Pay Your Taxes

[MrScorpio]

Posted by Andrew on April 20, 2011


As if anyone needed it, further evidence that the system is rigged heavily in favor of the rich:

Payroll taxes (deductions for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance) are mostly paid by the bottom 90 percent of earners. When they’re factored in on top of income tax, the gap between the tax rates at the very top and everyone else shrinks even more—so much that the effective tax rate for people earning more than $370,000 is nearly the same as for those earning between $43,000 and $69,000 a year.

As Martin A. Sullivan of Tax.com recently calculated, a New York janitor making slightly more than $33,000 a year pays an effective tax rate of nearly 25%. And the effective tax rate for a resident of the Park Avenue building named after Helmsley, earning an average of $1.2 million annually? A cool 14.7%.



Bear this in mind as you witness the purely fabricated debate unfolding in Washington about our spiraling national debt and the necessity to make drastic cuts in domestic spending. All the bogus statistics you hear about the wealthy being charged a higher income tax rate – while true in a very technical sense – are grossly distorted in order to portray an element of fairness which simply doesn’t exist in the U.S. tax system. The bottom line is that working and middle class Americans pay a higher tax rate than the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

This reality needs to be at the forefront of any debate about budget cuts. The MSM, of course, will never reveal this information, preferring instead to focus on the theatrical aspects of the imaginary Republican / Democrat divide. As a result, most Americans will never realize just how corrupt the system truly is, unless we help them learn. It is our responsibility – both to ourselves and to our fellow citizens – to do everything we can to make this knowledge public, and to call the greedy elites to account.

But let’s put this into even broader perspective. Ordinary Americans pay a tax rate which effectively amounts to 20-25% of gross income. The wealthiest Americans pay a tax rate which amounts to anywhere from 0 – 20% — but generally on the lower end of that spectrum, as demonstrated by multiple sources. Corporations, while technically required to pay up to 35% in taxes, pay absolutely nothing in many cases – in some cases even less, as with GE.

http://failedempire.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/save-the-rich-pay-your-taxes/

[leftstreet]

1. K&R

[Avalux]

2. Very nice. K&R. n/t