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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JBTFD who wrote (33764)	11/8/2012 8:47:48 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Sure they're a tax burden but they aren't impacted by income tax rates.

To: JBTFD who wrote (33764)	11/8/2012 9:10:06 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Fine. Include SS taxes. ----- Federal Tax Progressivity: Just the Facts From a new CBO report, here are the effective federal tax rates for 2004 (the most recent year available in this report): Lowest quintile, 4.5 Second quintile, 10.0 Middle quintile, 13.9 Fourth quintile, 17.2 Highest quintle, 25.1 Top 10 percent, 26.9 Top 5 percent, 28.5 Top 1 percent, 31.1 These numbers include all federal taxes (not just income taxes) and are expressed as a percentage of household income. gregmankiw.blogspot.com If you count transfer payments as a negative tax then its Bottom quintile: -301 percent Second quintile: -42 percent Middle quintile: -5 percent Fourth quintile: 10 percent Highest quintile: 22 percent Top one percent: 28 percent gregmankiw.blogspot.com (note: the two blog posts are using different years for data since the first post was from 2007, using 2004 tax data and the 2nd from 2012 using 2009 data) -- Edit - also see - Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95% July 29, 2009 taxfoundation.org

To: JBTFD who wrote (33764)	11/8/2012 9:55:38 PM
From: Little Joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

"It is convenient for you to ignore SS and medicare taxes, even though they are a tax burden. That is because if you include them you can't paint your ridiculously skewed caricatures" The fact is they are different. They are payments which are akin to 401K or health insurance. The benefits are tied to the paymens, unlike other taxes. They may not be perfect but the recipients of the benefits rather than the public in general benefit from the payments. Therefore those who pay those taxes benefit from the taxes and it does not contribute in general to the overall cost of government. lj