Obama Ready To Set Base Tax Rate on Filthy Rich

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is expected to seek a new base tax rate for the wealthy to ensure that millionaires pay at least at the same percentage as middle income taxpayers.

 

A White House official said the proposal would be included in the president's proposal for long term deficit reduction that he will announce Monday. The official spoke anonymously because the plan has not been officially announced.

 

Obama is going to call it the "Buffett Rule" for Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained that rich people like him pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than middle-class taxpayers.

 

Buffett wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece last month that he and his rich friends "have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress."

 

The measure would be in addition to $447 billion in new tax revenue that Obama is seeking to pay for his short-term spending and tax cutting plan to jump start the economy.

 

House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday he would oppose tax increases to reduce the deficit. Boehner has urged Congress' deficit "supercommittee" to lay the groundwork for a broad overhaul of the U.S. tax code.

 

The panel has almost unlimited authority to recommend changes in federal spending and taxes and is working against a deadline of Nov. 23.

 

Boehner said the panel has "only one option, spending cuts and entitlement reforms," a reference to government benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

 

Any broad compromise that clears the bipartisan committee is almost certain to require Democratic agreement to savings from programs such as Social Security and Medicare, along with Republican acquiescence to additional revenues, although any such trade-offs are rarely discussed openly until the last possible moment in negotiations.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/17/obama-tax-plan-millionaires_n_967861.html?icid=maing-grid7|aim|dl1|sec1_lnk2|96547

 

Ugh.

[funnygunny 521]

well...at least you don't have a woman running your country T_T

[RazorStar 4,025]

atta boy.

[Zack_of_Steel+ 3,014]

The rich absolutely SHOULD have to pay at least as much as the middle class.

[KeVo 176]

I'm up for the rich paying their fair share of taxes.

[Guest Phailadelphia]

FINALLY.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

The rich absolutely SHOULD have to pay at least as much as the middle class.

 

Why not instead cut the rate to the poor / middle class? Not only do the rich then pay a higher percentage, but you give relief to those who need it most?

 

Oh wait... The Feds don't stuff their pockets that way while driving us into an eternal shit fest.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Favre4Ever

[Guest Phailadelphia]

Why not instead cut the rate to the poor? Not only do the rich then pay a higher percentage, but you give relief to those who need it most?

 

Oh wait... The Feds don't stuff their pockets that way while driving us into an eternal shit fest.

 

 

And that solves what exactly (besides allowing Fox News to further demonize poor people)? The issue is the federal government doesn't have enough money to fund 2 wars and pull the economy out of a recession, hence the tax hikes on people who pay a lower percentage than most anyway.

 

When did tax hikes on the wealthy become taboo? I don't get it.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

And that solves what exactly (besides allowing Fox News to further demonize poor people)? The issue is the federal government doesn't have enough money to fund 2 wars and pull the economy out of a recession, hence the tax hikes on people who pay a lower percentage than most anyway.

 

When did tax hikes on the wealthy become taboo? I don't get it.

 

The government doesn't have the money to fund two wars... SO LETS RAISE TAXES.

 

Oh my God. Wow. I really can't believe I have to provide a counter point for such a response.

 

STOP THE NATION BUILDING. WE AREN'T THE WORLD POLICE. BRING OUR TROOPS HOME.

[Guest Phailadelphia]

The government doesn't have the money to fund two wars... SO LETS RAISE TAXES.

 

Oh my God. Wow. I really can't believe I have to provide a counter point for such a response.

 

STOP THE NATION BUILDING. WE AREN'T THE WORLD POLICE. BRING OUR TROOPS HOME.

 

That's incredibly naive.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Phailadelphia

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

Obviously we should just drop everything we've done to fuck up Iraq and Afghanistan and pull our troops back into the USA. It's that easy and makes perfect sense.

 

That's incredibly naive.

 

They don't want us there. We haven't helped them at all. It's a gigantic waste of time. And it's a waste of valuable resources and cash... THAT WE DON'T HAVE.

 

Please tell me why it is GOOD to be in the Middle East right now.

[seanbrock 1,684]

I say we cut taxes for the middle class/poor AND raise taxes on the rich?

[Guest Phailadelphia]

They don't want us there. We haven't helped them at all. It's a gigantic waste of time. And it's a waste of valuable resources and cash... THAT WE DON'T HAVE.

 

Please tell me why it is GOOD to be in the Middle East right now.

 

I need you to point out to me where I said it was good before I answer your question.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

I say we cut taxes for the middle class/poor AND raise taxes on the rich?

 

That would be much more acceptable. But again... Not enough pocket stuffing going on.

 

I need you to point out to me where I said it was good before I answer your question.

 

I don't defend things that I deem as "bad".. So you can explain that as well as why you think we should stay. Please.. Tell us why you believe our troops should continue to toil, suffer, and die, in the sands of the Middle East as we continue to fight unwinnable wars...

 

This answer should be good, because I don't find many people these days actually defending the fact that should continue to be pulled from their families to fight this war.

 

Heck, might even make for a great article on your little school blog.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Favre4Ever

[Shotgun 442]

They shouldn't have too, but they have been. You can't go to war, cause a bunch of issues in those countries, and then ship out at your own whim. Shit doesn't work that way. The government will not be pulling out anytime soon, the anti-war movement doesn't have enough backing and threat for that to happen. Nor would they considering we've destroyed some infrastructure and brought more violence to these countries by agitating the terrorists. The next logical thing is to raise more money to cover the deficit. Anyone who thinks taxing the rich more to help with that is a bad thing is out of their fucking minds, and they're probably well off and listen to fox news all day. The deficit absolutely will not be covered simply by cutting spending unless it's to some extreme amount that it hurts way more than it helps. Balance is the key.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

They shouldn't have too, but they have been. You can't go to war, cause a bunch of issues in those countries, and then ship out at your own whim. Shit doesn't work that way. The government will not be pulling out anytime soon, the anti-war movement doesn't have enough backing and threat for that to happen. Nor would they considering we've destroyed some infrastructure and brought more violence to these countries by agitating the terrorists. The next logical thing is to raise more money to cover the deficit. Anyone who thinks taxing the rich more to help with that is a bad thing is out of their fucking minds, and they're probably well off and listen to fox news all day. The deficit absolutely will not be covered simply by cutting spending unless it's to some extreme amount that it hurts way more than it helps. Balance is the key.

 

You may be the only person who says pulling out after a decade is "on a whim"... lol. And I fully realize we AREN'T going anywhere. Heck, I actually believe we will enter another war in the near future.

 

Raising taxes, whether they be rich or poor is not sound logic in trying to erase the deficit. You are almost coddling the Feds for spending money we don't have, printing money on a whim, and driving us into the ground.

 

The American people shouldn't have to carry the weight of the Federal Government's financial ineptitude.

 

Stop printing money, stop spending it in excess. It would take a while (as would any other solution), but it is the only proven method.

 

Bringing our troops home from across the world, and not just the middle east would infuse HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars back into our country. I realize the debt is in the tens of trillions, but hundreds of billions every year would be a really great start at erasing the debt.

 

Not only would it help out the debt... But would strengthen our national defense, and keep our troops home... where they belong.

[RazorStar 4,025]

The Feds don't have control over their own money, they have to pay back the bankers on interest bro.

[Shotgun 442]

You may be the only person who says pulling out after a decade is "on a whim"... lol. And I fully realize we AREN'T going anywhere. Heck, I actually believe we will enter another war in the near future.

 

Raising taxes, whether they be rich or poor is not sound logic in trying to erase the deficit. You are almost coddling the Feds for spending money we don't have, printing money on a whim, and driving us into the ground.

 

The American people shouldn't have to carry the weight of the Federal Government's financial ineptitude.

 

Stop printing money, stop spending it in excess. It would take a while (as would any other solution), but it is the only proven method.

 

Bringing our troops home from across the world, and not just the middle east would infuse HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars back into our country. I realize the debt is in the tens of trillions, but hundreds of billions every year would be a really great start at erasing the debt.

 

Not only would it help out the debt... But would strengthen our national defense, and keep our troops home... where they belong.

 

By "on a whim" I mean us not showing signs of leaving anytime soon and then packing up and leaving within a month, which is what we'd have to do in order to prevent the over spending and not raise taxes.

 

You're not coddling feds by raising taxes, your trying to get rid of a deficit. Raising taxes and lowering spending is the only way that is possible in a quick enough manner.

 

Anyway, my point was the war won't be over anytime soon regardless as to whether or not taxes are raised. It won't make anything go quicker. The only choice is to deal with it for now. I'm not saying your expectations are unreasonable or incorrect, I'm just saying it is unrealistic. It's not going to happen the way our shitty government is run and it's not going to happen when most Americans are retarded.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

By "on a whim" I mean us not showing signs of leaving anytime soon and then packing up and leaving within a month, which is what we'd have to do in order to prevent the over spending and not raise taxes.

 

You're not coddling feds by raising taxes, your trying to get rid of a deficit. Raising taxes and lowering spending is the only way that is possible in a quick enough manner.

 

Anyway, my point was the war won't be over anytime soon regardless as to whether or not taxes are raised. It won't make anything go quicker. The only choice is to deal with it for now. I'm not saying your expectations are unreasonable or incorrect, I'm just saying it is unrealistic. It's not going to happen the way our shitty government is run and it's not going to happen when most Americans are retarded.

 

Withdrawing in a month is just not logical. Obviously that isn't happening.

 

And sure you are. The Feds are irresponsible and overspend year after year after year. Make little to no sacrifices themselves to help the greater cause.

 

But now want to dump the pressure on us, the people, to BAIL THEM OUT? Fuck off, lol.

 

And there is no "quick" way to erase the deficit. We accumulated this debt over decades upon decades of being fiscally irresponsible. It's not going to be solved in 5-10 years.

[Guest Phailadelphia]

That would be much more acceptable. But again... Not enough pocket stuffing going on.

 

 

 

I don't defend things that I deem as "bad".. So you can explain that as well as why you think we should stay. Please.. Tell us why you believe our troops should continue to toil, suffer, and die, in the sands of the Middle East as we continue to fight unwinnable wars...

 

This answer should be good, because I don't find many people these days actually defending the fact that should continue to be pulled from their families to fight this war.

 

Heck, might even make for a great article on your little school blog.

 

Yet again, you're putting words in my mouth. Shotgun pretty much answered your question for me. It'd be extremely fucked up to enter Iraq and Afghanistan in the matter the US did then, yes, "on a whim," leave the country (how long we've been there is irrelevant to how we leave). I'm not defending either of our wars in the Middle East. Rather, I'm defending the absurd idea that we can just drop what we're doing and leave these countries even more fucked up than when we invaded them.

 

Foreign policy ignorance abound.

 

Anyway, back on topic:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/18/warren-buffett/warren-buffett-says-super-rich-pay-lower-taxes-oth/

 

Warren Buffett says the super-rich pay lower tax rates than others

True

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It's not often you see someone stand up and say, "Tax me more!"

 

Yet that's just what famed investor Warren Buffett has done in an op-ed in the New York Times headlined, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." Buffett says that very wealthy people like himself pay lower tax rates than the middle class, thanks to special tax categories for investment income.

 

"While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks," he writes.

 

As an example, Buffett said he paid an effective tax rate of 17.4 percent, while people who worked in his office made much less but paid higher effective tax rates of between 33 percent and 41 percent, averaging 36 percent.

 

"If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot," Buffett wrote. "To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot."

 

Buffett's op-ed inspired a reader to write to us and ask how Buffett's numbers could be correct. As our previous fact-checks have shown, about half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes because they are low income. And when you analyze who pays the bulk of federal income taxes, it's people with higher incomes. So we decided to fact-check Buffett's statement that "the mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. ... (The middle class) fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot."

 

Before we get to the heart of the fact-check, it's best if we review a few basics of the tax code that Buffett's op-ed takes for granted. This review proves the point that the federal tax code is extremely complicated, so bear with us.

 

 

Income taxes. Federal income taxes are progressive, which means your income is taxed at higher rates as you make more money. Let's take a married couple filing jointly as an example. In 2011, after deductions and exemptions:

 

• the income between $0 and $17,000 is taxed at 10 percent;

• the income between $17,000 and $69,000 is taxed at 15 percent;

• the income between $69,000 and $139,350 is taxed at 25 percent;

• the income between $139,350 and $212,300 is taxed at 28 percent;

• the income between $212,300 and $379,150 is taxed at 33 percent;

• the income above $379,150 is taxed at 35 percent.

 

Keep in mind that even if you're in the top bracket of 35 percent, you don't pay that tax rate on all your income. You pay 10 percent on the first $17,000, 15 percent on the money between $17,000 and $69,000, and so on.

 

Payroll taxes. Payroll taxes are separate from income taxes. If you work for a company, your employer deducts the payroll taxes before you get your paycheck and sends the money on to the federal government. These taxes pay for Social Security and Medicare; it's listed as FICA on your pay stub. Typically, workers pay 6.2 percent of their first $106,800 in earnings for Social Security taxes, and they pay 1.45 percent on all their earnings for Medicare hospital coverage. The employer has to match those taxes, bringing total contributions on behalf of an individual to 12.4 percent for Social Security and 2.9 percent for Medicare. Last year, though, President Barack Obama and Congress knocked 2 percentage points off Social Security taxes for workers, as an economic stimulus measure. So this year, most of us are paying 4.2 percent while employers pay 6.2 percent. Oh, and if you're self-employed, you typically have to pay your share and the employer share for totals this year of 10.4 percent on earnings up to $106,800 and 2.9 percent on all income. Payroll taxes are not progressive -- the rates don't get higher the more you earn. In the case of the Social Security taxes, which disappear once your reach a certain level of earnings, the percentage actually gets smaller if your income is higher than the $106,800 cap.

 

Head hurt yet? Ours, too.

 

Taxes on investments. Okay, now we're getting closer to Buffett's main point here, and that's taxes on investments. The tax rates on investments tend to be lower than taxes on regular income. If you make money buying and selling stocks or receiving dividends from stock ownership, those earnings are generally taxed at 15 percent, the rate for long-term capital gains and qualified dividends.

 

Some hedge fund managers and other finance-sector executives get taxed at this rate on their earnings because their compensation is classified as "carried interest" and taxed as a capital gain. (The Wall Street Journal breaks down how carried interest works.) In fact, some economists believe that the lower rates for capital gains actually encourages tax dodges, because it motivates high earners to look for ways to classify normal income as capital gains. Defenders say the lower tax rate helps the economy because it rewards investors for risk-taking and entrepreneurship. They also argue that taxing dividends amounts to double taxation because corporations pay taxes on their income before investors are paid dividends. We won't settle the argument here, but there's no doubt that investors get lower tax rates on their income than workers.

 

Getting back to Buffett's op-ed, his claims rest on how these taxes interact with each other. The fact we're checking here is that "the mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes," while middle class taxpayers "fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot."

 

He's right that a billionaire whose income is mostly from investments is probably taxed at a lower rate than someone who has an ordinary job. Very little of this taxpayer's income is wage income, so payroll taxes don't take much of a bite. It seems likely that much of this hypothetical person's income would be taxed around the 15 percent rate. And, in fact, as Buffett says, statistics from the Internal Revenue Service show that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers pay tax rates of less than 20 percent.

 

On the other side of the equation, people who work for a living, especially those who make higher than average salaries, get taxed at higher rates. It gets a little complicated, given how the tax brackets work, but basically, people who make between $100,000 and $200,000 are paying around 20 percent in income taxes, and it goes up from there, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

 

Buffett slightly glosses over the fact that if you're in the 25 percent tax bracket, your overall tax rate is less than 25 percent. And, the more money you make, the more income taxes you pay, while payroll taxes seem less and less significant as a percentage of income. We're dubious someone would pay as high as a 41 percent tax rate, as Buffett claims someone in his office now pays. (The top income tax rate is 35 percent, but payroll taxes as a share of income decline as income rises, which makes it difficult to get above 37.9 percent, according to the people we ran this by at the Tax Policy Center.) We contacted Buffett's offices as Berkshire Hathaway about this point but didn't hear back.

 

One final note: People who don't pay any income tax at all tend to have limited incomes, or they qualify for enough deductions -- think of child tax credits and mortgage interest -- that they have no income. When Buffett talks about people in the middle class who pay more taxes than he does, he's thinking of people who make much higher than average salaries.

 

So when it comes to Buffett's statement, there are two categories: the rich and the really rich. And the evidence tends to point to the conclusion that the really rich pay less in taxes as a percentage of income then their merely well-to-do counterparts -- if their income comes primarily from investments. Overall, we rate Buffett's statement True.

Edited September 19, 2011 by Phailadelphia

[Guest Phailadelphia]

But now want to dump the pressure on us, the people, to BAIL THEM OUT? Fuck off, lol.

 

Where do you get the idea that asking multi-millionairies to pay their fair share of taxes is somehow asking "the people" to bail out the federal government?

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

Where do you get the idea that asking multi-millionairies to pay their fair share of taxes is somehow asking "the people" to bail out the federal government?

 

Everyone pays taxes, dude.

[Guest Phailadelphia]

Everyone pays taxes, dude.

 

Right, and some don't pay what they're asked to pay due to a shit tax code with too many loopholes. There's no reason someone making billions of dollars should be paying a smaller percentage than someone making $50,000 yet it happens.

[Krawnka 282]

Raising taxes on the people that can afford tax shelters....brilliant.

 

How about less spending on entitlement programs...why doesn't the executive branch tighten up their belts and take a pay cut, not like they can't afford it...hell they don't even need it, with all of the campaign "contributions".

 

 

Why not just raise the taxes on campaign contributions...

 

And raise tarriffs on imported goods into this country.

[seanbrock 1,684]

GE payed no taxes last year

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558