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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Srexley who wrote (358521)	2/13/2003 11:15:57 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

You still fail to understand the simplest things: how much one pays vs. how much one earns (and how this compares to other people's situations)... or are you 'playing dumb' deliberately? This excerpt from your article comes the closest to answering part of the question I raised, but it still fails to deal with the concept of "average effective tax rates" for all the income sectors it mentions: >>> The wealthiest 1 percent those earning $293,415 and up paid over a third of the taxes, while their share of the nation's taxable income was 19 percent. They pay income taxes at the top rate, now 38.6 percent, compared with a maximum rate of 15 percent for the majority of lower-earning taxpayers. >>> ...Perhaps the biggest reason the rich are paying a higher share is that they continue to get richer, said Joel Slemrod, economics professor at the University of Michigan. Between 1980 and 1999, the share of total taxable U.S. income earned by the top 5 percent rose from 21 percent to 34 percent. --- So, basically this is saying that the 'top 1% of income earners', representing a little less than 20% of the nation's taxable income, pay approximately 33% of that income back to the Feds on this one tax.... (You will note that "33%" is not "38.6%"... that difference shows the effect of loopholes. That's what "effective average tax rate" is, the prevailing rate after loopholes are utilized.) --- Those figures of yours can of course be compared with the figures I posted (from the same tax year of 1999) which showed that the 'richest Americans' (earning over $110 million each that year) paid federal income tax at an effective rate of only 22%... not the "33%+" quoted for the "top 1% group" in your piece. --- This difference in the reported effective numbers (22% vs. 33%+) may not be so hard to reconcile after all: presumably the very rich have access to the very best tax advisors... and a number of high-powered tax avoidance schemes which are appropriate to them, and may in fact have been talored for them.... which loopholes and advisors those making well less than a million per year can't take advantage of so successfully. --- But, I think we would all agree that there is a big difference between the people at the entry point to that "top 1%" club of yours: those earning $293,415 and up per year (likely still "working stiffs" mostly, albeit Professional sorts like Doctors, Engineers, Financial types, etc.); and those fortunate "richest Americans" I quoted (earning more than $110 million that same year), who are at the highest reaches of that "top 1%" club. --- There certainly seems to be a difference between them, with those 'upper middle class' working guys forking it over at a '33%+' effective rate, and the 'creme de la creme' paying at the much lower rate of '22%'. --- You will note, of course, that's more than 11 full points lower... the 'creme de la creme' paid at a rate a full 1/3 lower than the average of your "top 1%" club. Perhaps you should quit reflexively mouthing insults in your posts, and get on with discussing the issues and the relevant facts... our numbers do not seem to be in gross disagreement... perhaps we are not either?