Not that it will penetrate the skulls of the pathetic dupes who spent yesterday teabagging in the rain, but their battle was won years ago:
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the average family forked over barely 9 percent of its earnings to the IRS in 2006, the most recent year for which information is available. The effective tax rate hit its all-time low in 2003 and has since crept up only slightly.Middle-class families — to whom President Obama has delivered even more tax relief since he took office in January — have fared especially well, according to the CBO. The middle fifth of taxpayers, who earned an average of $60,700 per household in 2006, paid just 3 percent in federal income tax that year, down from a high of 8.3 percent in 1981…
According to the most recent IRS statistics, about 45 million households — a third of all filers — owed no federal income tax after taking their credits and deductions in 2006. This year, with the profusion of new credits in the stimulus package, about 65 million households — or 43 percent of all filers — are likely to owe no income taxes, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.
My pet peeve: statistics and taxes. We're all in this together. If one person has to pay income tax, all should have to pay. Any system other than a flat tax rate is unfair to someone. Loopholes and deductions are abominations. Allowing corporations and individuals to move funds offshore is an abomination.
With all the computer power available, someone should be able to compute a flat tax rate that is equitable to everyone and workable and someone should be intelligent enough to design a tax form that doesn't require two accountants and an office full of tax lawyers to complete quickly and correctly.
Maybe we should consider a land value tax.
Posted by: Mahakal on April 16, 2009 10:00 PMYou two are unrealistic dreamers touting tax systems that had their heyday a century ago.
I'd settle for deducting health insurance premiums from net profits as a sole proprietor, like corporations are entitled to do.
Posted by: Joyful Alternative on April 16, 2009 10:08 PMHealth insurance premiums are rising at twice the rate of inflation. There's a realistic, non-dreaming future in which deducting their costs from net profits completely eliminates the tax burden. They'll also, eventually, completely eliminate the government's governing function and turn it into an unnecessary middleman in the process of extracting money from taxpayers to hand to the whining CEOs of welfare queen corporations. An absurdity, of course, even if it very closely resembles where we are right now.
Posted by: Jim on April 17, 2009 8:30 AM