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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (108217)	1/26/2012 11:40:21 AM
From: brushwud	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

I earned much much less than Romney, but my effective tax rate is 20% vs his 14%. Why is that fair? Didn't we cover that already? Because he's invested in corporations paying 30% corporate income tax whether he realizes any capital gains or not. Also, you're comparing your marginal rate to his average rate. As said previously, if he made another speech for $60K (on top of the $374K he made from speeches), his marginal tax rate would be more than yours. If stock dividends were deductible to corporations the same as bond interest, then it would make sense to tax dividends as ordinary income to the recipients with a progressive income tax. Bush didn't structure it that way because his opponents would call that a corporate tax break, even though it's healthier for the economy to have mature businesses distribute some cash to investors rather than keeping it concentrated and bottled up on a corporate balance sheet. It would also be more fair to have those investors pay at their various rates rather than a corporate rate or a straight 15% rate. if we forced all people who earn more than $1M a year in income to pay 30%, then it would raise a tremendous amount of tax revenue to help close the deficit. I'm sure it would raise a tremendous amount, but if the federal budget could actually be balanced on the backs of millionaires, that would've been done a long time ago. That hasn't been possible at least since World War I.