The U.S. Already Soaks the Rich In 2021 the richest 1% paid 45.8% of income taxes, up from..

Ignore above post. I believe these numbers are accurate. I made a error.

 

No country has a one rate tax system, nor has attempted to adopt one, Period!

 

Tax year 2021, top 1% share of income tax, 45.9%

Boosted by approx. 5% due to following reason;

40-year record high capital gains realization, over $2 trillion according to IRS preliminary data.

Thus, to me, it’s 41%, either tax year 2022 or 2023, hence “inaccurate” in quotation.

 

What few fail to realize is this is looking at things from the income tax side of government revenue. It does not give you anywhere near the whole picture. Republican and Democrat alike should take the time to really see what is going on.

If you analyze these numbers more closely you will find the resulting revenues from income taxes amount to 14.92% of GDP. You can do this by taking the % of income and multiplying by the tax rate for each group of taxpayers listed then summing all groups. The issue is, government expenditures are not covered by 14.92% of GDP. Not even close.

Another ~10% of GDP comes from other forms of federal taxation like corporate taxes, tariffs, customs, land sales, and reserve leases etc. All of these additional revenues get indirectly placed on the backs of the taxpayers (obviously). They are rolled into the prices we pay for everything (up to and including the price of stocks). This gets the government up to about 25% of GDP. This is still no where near enough to cover government expenditures.

All spending not covered by the above is just printed (called monetizing the debt). In each of Biden's first 3 years in office more than $4.5T of government spending had to be monetized as the above revenues were insufficient to cover spending. $5T this year. Next fiscal year (starting in Oct) the amount will rise to $7T! The government will ALWAYS print whatever money it takes to cover expenditures. They will not default EVER. However, this printing WILL CAUSE INFLATION. So we don't need to worry about default. But we do need to worry about inflation. The current ~$5T monetized amounts to about 20% of GDP. Next fiscal year it will be worse and the inflation will fall on the next administration. This brings the total revenues spent by the government to 45% of GDP. Making us about half socialist on a strictly fiscal basis.

Step back and look at what the are doing. If you just look at income taxes you find the wealthy indeed pay a much much much higher rate than all other wage earners. All of you above who claim otherwise are just fooling yourselves. The wealthy pay far and away virtually all of those government revenues. But it only goes to cover less than 1/3 of the total spending (i.e. 14.92/45). The remaining 30% of GDP (2/3 of gov spending) comes on the backs of the poor and middle class. Mostly the poor! Inflation due to printing money (needed because the government overspends) is paid by the poor. INFLATION IS A REGRESSIVE TAX! The poor actually pay a much higher rate for inflation than the rich do.

So yes the wealthy pay 90% of the 15% of GDP raised through income taxes. But the poor pay 60% of the 30% of GDP raised through monetary policy (printing dollars out of thin air they don't have to make up the shortfall). The middle class actually pays 50% of the 30% of GDP, while many of the rich actually benefit from inflation. Altering the tax code will do little to nothing to help the poor. If you want to help the poor and the middle class of this country, stop spending more than is taken in through the tax code!

Yet it is these same lower income and middle income people who keep demanding the government spend more money on more programs. The way they have been duped is by making them think it is paid for by the rich and is therefore free. Nothing could be further from the truth. The government prints 30% of the GDP (which is 67% of the budget), takes half of that for themselves (bureaucracy) then gives 15% back to them. All 30% covered by the poor and middle classes. Many of the middle class in favor of these expenditures are the bureaucrats who get paid to implement these programs. The poor do not benefit at all. If you want to help the poor, STOP EXCESS SPENDING, balance the budget completely through the tax code (wealthy pay more), let the poor keep the savings without inflation and spend it how THEY choose to spend it, not how some government bureaucrat thinks they should spend it.

Unfortunately, Americans are so divided and so clueless as to how the government balances the books we are doing nothing but infighting while the poor suffer all the more. We all (Democrat and Republican) alike want to help the poor. We have different ideas on how to do that, but all have the same goals. Neither Rep of Dem seem to realize why their methods fail. It is because both sides stay in power by overspending and taking special interest payoff. All gov revenues should come from the tax code and spending above that should not be allowed by any Congress.

 

Quote; Yes Covid skewed everything, threw all the rules out the window.

That’s what I’ve been telling you, and here you are in this thread posting percentages of an ABNORMAL Tax year.

Like I told you, due to a 40-year record high capital gains realization, over $2 trillion according the IRS, the top 1% share of 45.9% will come down to a near 40%.

 

WHY?

Tax fairness isn’t just a domestic debate, thus, I made several comparisons, for example;

In Canada, their top 20% share of total income earned is 49.1%, and share of income tax, 66.4%. Top 1% share of total income earned, 10.7%, and share of income tax, 17.1%.

Same for most European countries, and that’s because their top 1% share of total income earned are significantly lower than our Top 1%. Also, what stunt me is Luxembourg’s 23 tax brackets/rates, and per capita, a whole lot of millionaires and billionaires.

Thus, compared to other first world countries;

U.S. top 1% share of income tax, and average tax rate represent fairness, but not their share of total earned income.

 

I believe that you are mistaking GDP for total government spending. They are two entirely different concepts. GDP has no place in a discussion of divvying up the pie of government revenues and or spending. The top 1% DO pay 45.8% of all federal income tax revenues. GDP is not related to that calculation in any way.

 

My concept of justice is,"benefits commensurate with contributions and costs commensurate with deprivations." Please explain what is parasitic about that.

Never mind: we both know you can't.

But I have explained what is parasitic about your concept of justice: owning legal entitlements to profit from the uncompensated abrogation of others' rights -- like slave deeds, land deeds, IP monopolies, and bank licenses -- is not a contribution, is not a valid property right, and does not justify the exorbitant subsidization it receives under our modern system of finance capitalism.

Of course, as always, you are trying to change the subject to me personally.

I never said you owed me anything for my existence other than respect for my rights, and you know it. You just want to be legally entitled to abrogate my rights and not make just compensation for what you are taking from me.

Fact is, you owe everyone for being legally entitled to benefit from the abrogation of their rights without making just compensation for what you are taking from them. And yes, that is justice.

 

Your overthinking….

Income taxes collected between January 01, 2021 to December 31, 2021; $2.226 Trillion

Bottom 50% Income tax paid between Jan 1 - Dec 31, 2021, $51.2 billion, mainly from tax withheld.

Bottom 50% Number of tax returns for tax year 2021; 76,794,954

Bottom 50%, Share of income tax paid between Jan 1 and Dec 31, 2021;

$2.226 Trillion X 2.3% = $51.2 billion

Bottom 50% average income tax paid from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2021; $666, mainly tax withheld

BUT WAIT!

Bottom 50%….2021 advanced Child Tax Credit….at least $25 billion

Reference to Mitt Romney’s 47%……Today, closer to 49%.

 

It's most definitely true.

No, your claims are false. I already posted the proof -- the Henry George Theorem -- that the bottom taxpayers don't get any benefits at all, because they have to pay their landlords full market value just for permission to access all desirable public services and infrastructure. The only people who benefit are landowners.

In addition to pocketing all government spending on desirable public services and infrastructure, the rich are the overwhelming beneficiaries of government-issued and -enforced privileges like IP monopolies, bank licenses, oil and mineral rights, and broadcast spectrum allocations. They also own the arms companies that "defense" spending goes to. The rich are legally entitled to steal ~half of GDP via the privileges they own, and repay just a small fraction of that in taxes.

 

I.e., you know that you cannot refute a single sentence I wrote, and you have been conclusively refuted, but you decline merely on that account to reconsider your proved-false beliefs.

It's always the same.

I.e., you cannot refute any of the facts of objective reality that I identified or their inescapable logical implications, and you prefer not to see any more conclusive and unanswerable refutations of your beliefs. Simple.

 

Henry George is complete nonsense and your hatred of the rich is bordering on paranoid

 

your terminology is peculiar and not close to being widely accepted. it's affected

 

Nah.

ie., I see your position as being dissociated from reality, and I was taught to not argue with the village idiot lest no one will be able to tell you apart.

That is 100% the truth. This is a discussion of income tax burden by income, and you are arguing to end income taxes altogether. You are arguing oranges in a discussion about apples. Not interested. I prefer reality-based discussions.

Sorry.

 

All of them. THAT'S WHY LAND COSTS SO MUCH.

No, that's just another absurd and disingenuous strawman fallacy from you. Everyone who owns land that is made more desirable by a bridge is pocketing a subsidy paid for by the taxes that paid for the bridge. No one else gets any benefit, because they have to pay a landowner full market value just for permission to access the bridge.

It is a fact, and has been proved mathematically. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading.

The US federal tax system is absurd, inefficient, and unfair in many ways -- mainly because of the constitutional prohibition on direct taxes unless apportioned among the states by population -- but the progressivity of the federal income tax is one of its less objectionable aspects. Apologists for the greed, privilege, and parasitism of America's super-duper uber-rich seem to reserve a special, maniacal hatred for two of the fairest and most efficient federal taxes on the books: the personal income tax and the estate tax.

 

No, it merely identifies the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality. You would just prefer that those facts not be identified because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil. Simple.

 

its complete bullshit: you adopt some affected terminology and pretend that is some super truth and what ti comes down to is just plain old envy

 

Biden was running his mouth about the tax issue in his phoney "Scranton Joe" poor mouth speech. He wants to up the tax on billionaires, not to fix the national debt, but to get back at those "rich bastards." Less than two weeks before, "Scranton Joe" was hobnobbing with Barck "two mansions in Hawaii and Martha's Vineyard" Obama and Bill "my net worth is over $100 million" Clinton where it costs $100 grand to get your photo with the former presidents.

Talk about hypocrisy!

The Democrats hate all rich people except those who give them money. That's what you will have to do in America if you have any money these day. Beg the Democrats to get to keep some of it.

 

Yah.

But you cannot identify anything I have said that is not objectively correct.

Oh, I don't think you have to worry about that: everyone reading this can see I am making clear, logical, and irrefutable arguments, and you are just disingenuously trying to avoid addressing them.

No it isn't, and you know it. You are fully aware that there is nothing idiotic in my arguments, and that they are clear, logical, and based on irrefutable facts.

No it isn't. The subject line says it is about the tax burden on the rich. I have identified the fact that the OP's intention was to pretend that the US federal income tax system unfairly burdens the rich when it actually unfairly burdens honest working people for the unearned benefit of rich, greedy, privileged parasites.

No, I am simply stating my position for clarity because I know from experience that the opposing side will always choose to make false claims about my views. I am also identifying the fact that the US federal income tax does not represent an unfair burden on "the rich" -- who often contrive to pay little or no personal income tax -- but on the honest, mid- and high-income working people who pay the bulk of the US federal income tax.

 

You cannot refute a single sentence I wrote, and you know it, which is why you have not even attempted to do so.

You mean accurate. That is why you cannot offer any response.

Still awaiting any sort of counter-argument....

Inevitably, your only "argument" is a disingenuous and despicable ad hominem fallacy.

There are few acts a human being can commit that are more evil than to accuse those who oppose injustice of envy for those who profit from it.

 

you create some bizarre code words and then pretend that gives them truth. No one else even accepts your stilted definitions, Certainly not our legal system

 

You are discussing an entirely different subject, which I have zero interest in discussing.

It feels like one of those situations where you see a skinny blond woman with long hair at a bar, you go up to talk to her, only to realize when she turns around it is just a skinny guy with long hair. I have no interest in continuing that conversation because "he" is not what I was looking for. The same thing applies to you. I am here to discuss the percentage of income taxes paid by the 1%, and you are interested in discussing eliminating the concept of income taxes. Just like with the blond dude, Im not interested. Not even a little bit.

Sorry.

You can stop puffing up your chest over literally nothing.

 

“The top 1% DO pay 45.8% of all federal income tax revenues”

Correction; Tax year 2021, top 1% paid 45.8%

Tax year 2022/2023, unknown!….I don’t know, and you don’t know.

However, according to the IRS, we had a 40-year record high of capital gains realization, over $2 trillion, and as a percentage of Nominal GDP, 8.7%, long run average, 3.7%, thus, + 5%, and according to Heritage Foundation, mainly high income earners.

DA MATH…..

2021 Nominal GDP; $27.96 Trillion, BEA third estimate

$27.96 X 5% = $1.4 Trillion

Taxation of capital gains……

Average cap gains tax rate, (15% to 20%); 17.5%

1.4 X 17.5% = $245 billion

Tax year 2021, top 1% share of income tax paid; 45.8%,

Tax year 2021, total income taxes collected; $2.226 Trillion X 45.8% = $1.2 Trillion

$1.2 trillion MINUS $245 billion = $955 billion

$955/$2.226 = 43%

THUS, considering all of the above, and several more factors, 2022/2023 top 1% share of income tax will most likely be lower than 43%.

Note; Tax year 2020 and 2021 were abnormal years.

 

My post that you just replied to was about the other person mistakenly confusing GDP and government spending.

With that being the case, I find your reply here confusing because it has nothing to do with that topic and it substantively changes nothing in that discussion. I guess you are arguing against the notion that the percentage provided (which came from a different post) only applies to that year, but you could get that point across in many other posts that are specifically about that subject.

In post 585 you had said you were going to get back with me regarding why you see the breakdown as fair, and have not. It would have made far more sense to tackle this topic in relation to that conversation. The context then would make sense. Im not necessarily saying your assertion above is incorrect, Im just not sure in the given context what it is you are wanting to debate.

 

That's why no link to the source of the data is given.