What do you think will happen if the Fortune 1000 companies (or all companies for that matter) get hit with a nice big tax bill? Just accept it and continue on as before? Heck no...their performance as analyzed by Wall Street requires them to meet certain expectations, so they will have to make up for it by cutting costs. In an economic situation where most companies have just weathered a recession and have already streamlined operations to return to profitability, likely "costs" can be read as "jobs", especially the ones recently created. Welcome back, recession.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Come on man, who actually trusts the IRS? For every right wing site that someone regurgitates in this forum, I can find a left wing site with stats and numbers that are just as compelling in appearance. Stats are easy to twist just like everything else in the media.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Do I trust the IRS to report accurate statistics? Yes. Do I expect people of any particular mindset to use or present only those reported statistics that further their own respective cause? Yes.
Are you suggesting that there is some right-wing government conspiracy to purposefully supress or replace IRS actual recorded statistics? Get a grip.
Exactly! You can "spin" stories, claims, even things out of context, but what struck me about this unlike so many other articles and posts with political undertones, is that these were as close to hard and fast numbers from a legitimate source (the people who actually collect the taxes) as possible. I found it striking.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Come on man, who actually trusts the IRS? For every right wing site that someone regurgitates in this forum, I can find a left wing site with stats and numbers that are just as compelling in appearance. Stats are easy to twist just like everything else in the media.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Do I trust the IRS to report accurate statistics? Yes. Do I expect people of any particular mindset to use or present only those reported statistics that further their own respective cause? Yes.
Are you suggesting that there is some right-wing government conspiracy to purposefully supress or replace IRS actual recorded statistics? Get a grip.
Exactly! You can "spin" stories, claims, even things out of context, but what struck me about this unlike so many other articles and posts with political undertones, is that these were as close to hard and fast numbers from a legitimate source (the people who actually collect the taxes) as possible. I found it striking.
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The problem is in how income is defined. But I guess by your standard, if the government says so then it must be true.
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
OK, time for some perspective. The top 1% of the united states owns more wealth than the entire bottom 95% combined. Say the numbers from your article are accurate. How is it fair that top 1% are only responsible for 1/3 of the tax burden while everyone else picks up the rest?
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
-- Abraham Lincoln
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Wow - there is so much wrong with those statements its hard to know where to start.
Lets take a real basic approach though. Even if we assumed your 1% figure was right, you aren't talking about taxing new income - you are advocating retaxing existing wealth with your comments.
In other words, if I own 1 billion dollars, and I've already paid taxes on the 2 billion dollars I earned so I could have 1 billion dollars - are you saying I should pay tax, even if I didn't make any more money?
I fully understand your point. The point that I was trying to make was that income as it applies to the rich can be easily hidden or "sheltered" from income tax. Say that you owned a large corporation, your net worth as it relates to that corporation may be 1 billion dollars, but in all likelyhood that corporation payed little to no income tax last year despite showing a profit. The only income tax that you paid may have been on your salary as CEO or something to that affect. Now somone will argue that if you ever sold the corporation that you would have to pay capital gains on that profit. Well, there are ways around that too. I would get further into it, but I'm sleepy. My point is that your net worth can easily increase without you paying proportional taxes on it.
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
How can The Rich pay $1,000,000,000,000 for Kerry's health Plan?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I'm not contesting who Kerry wants to pay for this, I'm curious about how this number was determined.
If it's the number that is currently being paid for health insurance - does it really matter who you pay if you get the care you need?
This is a "generated" number, someone needs to back it up. Where did it come from, who made it, and how did they determine it? This number is very much suspect, unless that's the current cost of healthcare in the US today (in which case it's an irrelevant number designed to create fear); I would imagine it includes costs for optional surgeries (ie, implants) that wouldn't be covered and then factors these costs across the breadth of people who'd never get them in the first place.
This is the problem with numbers, statistics, etc. They can be manipulated to show anything you want. I wish I could remember what movie it was, but to massacre a quote from it - with enough research, a scientist can prove that an elephant can hang over a cliff from daisy.
The point is, you can take numbers and throw them out there to scare people, why not sit down and look at it in the light of reality and see what the result would really be? We know that people with insurance end up costing less money (out of pocket *and* insurance covered) than those without - the office visits and ability to get care before a problem expands significantly reduce overall costs.
We also know that many non-profit (and some for-profit) hospitals are reeling under the load of un-insured patients who couldn't get basic care and require dramatic surgery or other care to recover from what could have easily been corrected in an early stage. Whatever the case, we (the well-to-do) are paying for it, whether it be a surcharge on our doctor's visits that the local offices charge to make up the difference, a fee from hospitals for any surgery to cover debt payments, increased taxes to fund local non-profit/community hospitals, or reduced scientific/health funding to cover increasing operational costs.
If properly executed, I would support a nationwide health plan. I believe that basic healthcare should be given to all people; those who can afford more than the basics should be given the opportunity to spend their personal wealth to get the additional care they desire.
That was a bit of a digression. Heh.
'04 G35 Coupe 6MT, Black/Black, Premium Package, Aero Package w/Spoiler, Infinity Basslink, Clear Bra
OK, time for some perspective. The top 1% of the united states owns more wealth than the entire bottom 95% combined. Say the numbers from your article are accurate. How is it fair that top 1% are only responsible for 1/3 of the tax burden while everyone else picks up the rest?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Lets take a real basic approach though. Even if we assumed your 1% figure was right, you aren't talking about taxing new income - you are advocating retaxing existing wealth with your comments.
In other words, if I own 1 billion dollars, and I've already paid taxes on the 2 billion dollars I earned so I could have 1 billion dollars - are you saying I should pay tax, even if I didn't make any more money?
This points to one of the weaknesses in the statistics the IRS generates. They only report total income and taxes paid on that income, not the wealth of the individuals paying taxes. So, if I say the top 1% of Americans have 75% of the wealth, the IRS does not have statistics to prove me wrong. (Just throwing out numbers...) Plus, one has to look at where on the tax form the 'income' came from - does it include any deductions, capital losses, etc.
Gardiner also indicated out a very interesting point - the IRS documentation only reports on those paying taxes, but the article talks about taxes over the entire population. This means each person who earns no income is counted, so it's inevitable that the results are badly skewed. The article actually pointed this out inadvertantly, when it said "In 2002, the average household's income was $57,852 and it paid $13,529 in taxes."; average income - but this is 23% tax, or top 10%. Oops?
So, in effect, this article really doesn't point out any weaknesses, or even any useful information at all - it just shows tax information with some spin.
Kal.
'04 G35 Coupe 6MT, Black/Black, Premium Package, Aero Package w/Spoiler, Infinity Basslink, Clear Bra
I fully understand your point. The point that I was trying to make was that income as it applies to the rich can be easily hidden or "sheltered" from income tax. Say that you owned a large corporation, your net worth as it relates to that corporation may be 1 billion dollars, but in all likelyhood that corporation payed little to no income tax last year despite showing a profit. The only income tax that you paid may have been on your salary as CEO or something to that affect. Now somone will argue that if you ever sold the corporation that you would have to pay capital gains on that profit. Well, there are ways around that too. I would get further into it, but I'm sleepy. My point is that your net worth can easily increase without you paying proportional taxes on it.
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
-- Abraham Lincoln
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You're referring to tax shelters - tax shelters don't protect you from AMT tax (look it up). They are also designed to direct investment (although Comgress has lost sight of how that tool works) to help market segments.
Increases in a persons "net worth" doesn't translate into a better standard of living. You can't buy cars with net worth, you can't heat your house with net worth, you can't even feed your kids with net worth.
Most people who really understand how taxes work in higher incomes think they are unfair.
