Tax Whoppers the right likes to spread

[Dardedar]

*gdp




http://www.skepticmoney.com/what-should ... t-default/

Also: zfacts



And:



LINK

[Dardedar]

Tax Fraud

Debunking the claim that higher income-tax rates reduce GDP.
By Eliot Spitzer



"...it's obvious that there is no correlation between higher marginal tax rates and slowing economic activity. During the period 1951-63, when marginal rates were at their peak—91 percent or 92 percent—the American economy boomed, growing at an average annual rate of 3.71 percent. The fact that the marginal rates were what would today be viewed as essentially confiscatory did not cause economic cataclysm—just the opposite. And during the past seven years, during which we reduced the top marginal rate to 35 percent, average growth was a more meager 1.71 percent."

http://www.slate.com/id/2245781/

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

American Millionaires: 1,400 Paid No U.S. Income Taxes In 2009

"of the 235,413 taxpayers who earned $1 million or more in 2009, 1,470 of them paid no taxes."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/0 ... 18458.html

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

[Dardedar]

Warren Buffet says it again:

Stop coddling the Super Rich

New York Times

[Dardedar]

The truth about 'class war' in America

Republicans claim, in Orwellian fashion, that Obama's millionaire tax is 'class war'.
The reality is that the super-rich won the war

"Republicans and conservatives always fight back against proposals to raise taxes on corporations and rich individuals by making two basic claims. First, such proposals amount to un-American "class warfare", pitting the working class against corporations and the rich. Second, such proposals would take money for the government that would otherwise have been invested in production and thus created jobs.

Neither logic nor evidence supports either claim. The charge of class war is particularly obtuse. Consider simply these two facts. First, at the end of the second world war, for every dollar Washington raised in taxes on individuals, it raised $1.50 in taxes on business profits. Today, that ratio is very different: for every dollar Washington gets in taxes on individuals, it takes 25 cents in taxes on business. In short, the last half century has seen a massive shift of the burden of federal taxation off business and onto individuals.

Second, across those 50 years, the actual shift that occurred was the opposite of the much more modest reversal proposed this week by President Obama; over the same period, the federal income tax rate on the richest individuals fell from 91% to the current 35%. Yet, Republicans and conservatives use the term "class war" for what Obama proposes – and never for what the last five decades have accomplished in shifting the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the working class.

The tax structure imposed by Washington on the US over the last half-century has seen a massive double shift of the burden of taxation: from corporations to individuals and from the richest individuals to everyone else. If the national debate wants seriously to use a term like "class war" to describe Washington's tax policies, then the reality is that the class war's winners have been corporations and the rich. Its losers – the rest of us – now want to reduce our losses modestly by small increases in taxes on the super-rich (but not, or not yet, on corporations)."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... icans-rich

[Dardedar]

Got these links from a post by alpha_cat on NWAonline...

How the Deficit Got This Big
By TERESA TRITCH
Published: July 23, 2011

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.



And:



New York Times

Also:



And an updated jobs chart:



Source

[Dardedar]

GOP lies on taxes

by Ernest Dumas

"Voters, or enough of them, will take fancy over fact if it is delivered convincingly and habitually. Politicians have always employed that proverb, but national Republicans are giving it its toughest test in the struggle for the hearts and minds of voters on the country's economic troubles."

"Let's take Boozman first. He issued a statement using the standard Republican boilerplate. The president, Boozman said, wants to stimulate the economy by raising taxes, contrary to what he had said at the depth of the recession in 2009.

"What he doesn't tell us is that his proposed $1.5 trillion in new taxes [over 10 years starting in 2013] will hit all of us."

Well, to be fairly exact, in Boozman's Arkansas, of the 1,200,000 who file federal income tax returns it would hit about 15,000 individuals or couples and for most of them it would be a pittance. If you substituted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's surtax on millionaires, which Obama said he would sign if Congress passed it instead of his plan, the tax would fall on some 1,100 people who have taxable incomes of more than $1 million a year.

So, 15,000 or 1,100 out of 1.2 million taxpayers. Is that close enough to "all of us" to suit you?"

Arkansas Times

[Dardedar]

What Happened to the Republican Party on Taxes?

"The party may revere Reagan, but they definitely wouldn't recognize each other if they met at a tax policy conference today. Nor would the gipper last for long on the Republicans side of the deficit-reduction super committee. Recall from work done by my CBPP colleague Kathy Ruffing that 82% of the savings in the 1984 Deficit Reduction Act came from revenues.

(I realize I'm straying into a space that the former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett covers extremely well, by the way.)"



LINK

[Dardedar]

The Flat-Tax Fraud, and the Necessity of a Truly Progressive Tax

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011
Herman Cain’s bizarre 9-9-9 plan would replace much of the current tax code with a 9 percent individual income tax and a 9 percent sales tax. He calls it a “flat tax.”

Next week Rick Perry is set to announce his own version of a flat tax. Former House majority leader Dick Armey – now chairman of Freedom Works, a major backer of the Tea Party funded by the Koch Brothers and other portly felines (I didn’t say “fat cats”) — predicts this will give Perry “a big boost.” Steve Forbes, one of America’s richest billionaires, who’s on the board of the Freedom Works foundation, is delighted. He’s been pushing the flat tax for years.

The flat tax is a fraud. It raises taxes on the poor and lowers them on the rich.

We don’t know exactly what Perry will propose, but the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that Cain’s plan (the only one out there so far) would lower the after-tax incomes of poor households (incomes below $30,000) by 16 to 20 percent, while increasing the incomes of wealthier households (incomes above $200,000) by 5 to 22 percent, on average.

Under Cain’s plan, fully 95 percent of households with more than $1 million in income would get an average tax cut of $487,300. And capital gains (a major source of income for the very rich) would be tax free.

The details of flat-tax proposals vary, of course. But all of them end up benefitting the rich more than the poor for one simple reason: Today’s tax code is still at least moderately progressive. The rich usually pay a higher percent of their incomes in income taxes than do the poor. A flat tax would eliminate that slight progressivity."

The rest... Robert Reich's blog

[Dardedar]

Some Billionaires Paying Less Than One Percent In Taxes

"The top 400 earners in the U.S. paid an average tax rate of 18 percent, according to a Bloomberg TV report noticed by Think Progress. And though that's a far lower rate than the 26.5 percent that many families making less than $100,000 pay annually in taxes, some of America's super-rich have been able to whittle their tax bill down even more, paying a tax rate as low as one percent..."

Huff Po

[Dardedar]

From a clip by Rachael Madow:

Rachel Maddow Calls Out The GOP Lie That Obama Has Grown Government

"It’s a default Republican talking point to accuse all Democrats of wanting to grow government and to say that instead government should be shrunk. Despite that Republican talking point, government did grow more than at any time since World War II under their Republican president, under George W. Bush and a Republican congress, and this Democratic president is proposing shrinking government, but that will not interrupt the talking point, which alleges exactly the opposite of what’s really happening.

It’s the same thing on taxes on regulations. It is a default Republican epithet that Democrats want to increase taxes and they want to increase regulations…So they say not only does President Obama want to increase taxes and regulations, he already has. And while that talking point is a tried and true talking point, it’s an applause line, right? What the Obama administration has actually done bears no resemblance to the talking point, and is therefore a bit of a flabbergast for Republicans on this.

In January of last year, it has gone down the memory hole for Republicans, but President Obama issued an executive order and wrote an op-ed in the rabidly right wing Wall Street Journal editorial page calling for a government wide pruning of unnecessary or overly burdensome regulations. In February of 2009, President Obama implementing either the largest or one of the largest middle class tax cuts in American history. That was part of the stimulus actually, but you’d never know it from the way that the Republicans talk about it. The administration also brags on having passed 17 tax cuts specifically for small business. So naturally, keep denouncing him as raising taxes, piling on the regulations, and raising taxes.”

Maddow explained that the Republican talking points always stay the same against Democrats, even when they don’t make sense. The MSNBC host also pointed out that the Republican invectives have become disconnected from what is actually happening in governing.

Not only has Obama shrunk the size the government, but he has reduced it more than Republican hero Ronald Reagan ever did. In 2011, President Obama became the biggest tax cutter in American history. Obama has cut more taxes than any other president in American history. Obama’s move to reorganize and cut government overlap represents who this president really is, and how he governs.

President Obama isn’t a tax raising, government growing, socialist. Obama is a centrist Democrat who has more politically in common with Bill Clinton and JFK than he does FDR and LBJ. The right wing portrayal of Obama is so out of touch with reality that only Republicans buy it. The far left is angry with Obama because they thought they were getting FDR, or at least what they thought FDR was, and instead have gotten a moderate Democrat.

Obama has done more to cut government than any Republican president in the modern era, but this hasn’t stopped the GOP from playing to their base with outrageous claims that have no basis in fact. In recent months Obama has flummoxed the Republican Party, and with each voyage into their alternate Obama universe, Republicans take another step away from winning the White House in 2012."

PoliticsUSA

[ghost]

Darrel, thanks for linking from the other thread. Once again, your "freethinking" forum shows there's isn't much free thought, just what the left spews.

Ok, let's see.....

Chart 1. Interesting, but what does it tell us? Revenue is low because unemployment is high and the economy is in a slump. Not a shocker there.

Chart 2. Also interesting. Especially given how much money we spend, I'm thinking it's because our GDP is so high that gives us a smaller share. The chart says it's for taxation at all levels of government, which is good. But we know that local and state taxes have been doing nothing but going up, and there's a ton we can cut federally on military and worthless departments. So I'm not sure what this chart is really telling me. Also, it's easy to have "low" taxes when you're borrowing 40% of what you spend instead of taxing the people for it. If we balanced the budget tomorrow using nothing but tax increases (just hypothetical, because that wouldn't be possible), we'd move up the scale quite a bit. I know the other countries are paying their bills with credit cards too, but Europe is starting to see the effects of that, and we're next.

Chart 3. This doesn't belong in the argument at all. First off, it doesn't compare us against the rates in other countries, next the marginal rate alone doesn't tell us much, and it's only talking about personal income tax...which is one tax of many. In other words, this chart gives no information that supports us being a "low tax" nation. Want low tax? Look at the USA 100 years ago.

Chart 4. This chart also doesn't compare our capital gains taxes with other countries. So is this low? Compared to what? The past? Yeah, I can see that. But chart 2 is comparing us to other countries. So what comparison are we making here?

Chart 5. Same as 4.

Chart 6. This isn't a surprise, given that the wealthiest are making most of their money from investments taxed at 15%. Also, The chart and the description have a discrepancy that needs to be addressed. The chart says the red line is households with more than $1M in income, and the description says "millionaires". Those aren't the same thing. I assume that the chart reflects the former and the description is wrong, but if that's not the case, then the chart is meaningless.

Chart 7. We need more information to determine what's going on here. Many US companies have business units outside the United States that aren't subject to US tax, but their earnings are disclosed in aggregate. So we need to know what this chart is actually measuring. Also, it's really all moot, corporate tax rates should be zero because corporations can't pay taxes.

Chart 8. This chart is deceiving because it says we generate "much less" revenue from corporate taxes than "other countries". Yeah, it looks like just a few. The rest we seem to be right in line with. Like I said, make the corporate rate zero, and we'll become a tax haven for companies and investors, which drastically help our economy.

Chart 9. Similar arguments from 7 and 8 also apply here.

Chart 10. Best chart in the whole bunch, not a surprise, and shows exactly what's wrong with our government. If you boys would stop electing establishment politicians who dole out our tax money for special favors, we can put an end to this. Sadly, you'll keep voting for Obama and all of the other Dems. Their campaign contributors tell the truth about whom these people really represent, and it's not you and me. And sadly, others will vote for Romney and the other elephants, and the partisan pissing match will continue while the public gets the shaft. We've brought this on ourselves, but it still shocks me every day to see how many people don't get more involved.


But mostly, this is a bunch of cherry picked data.

[ghost]

Also, and just food for thought. I pulled my 2010 return, and ran some quick numbers. On my middle class income, I'm paying about 35% of it to taxes. Federal, state, and local. I'm sure the figure is conservative, because I don't have a good way to quantify all of the extra little taxes like those on alcohol or franchise fees on utility bills. It's also impossible to quantify the amount of the corporate tax I'm paying that's buried in the goods and services I buy, or that reduces the income on my investments. Also, this is with a substantial deduction for mortgage interest. Once the house is paid off, I'll be paying even more.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if I was actually paying about half of my income to taxes. Hardly what I would consider to be low.

[Dardedar]

Once again, your "freethinking" forum shows there's isn't much free thought, just what the left spews.

Our forum is open to all political persuasions Mr. Ghost. We have had dozens of rightwingers around here over the years but for some reason they tend run off rather after their factual errors are repeatedly exposed. If your side is under represented there is nothing I have done or can do to help you out with that, so please stop wanking about it and get to work making your case for why your conservative beliefs are so grand. I am open to being swayed by strong arguments. Let's see how your complaints regarding these ten examples showing the US is a low tax country, hold up to examination.

[Chart 1: Tax revenue is at its lowest level since 1950]

Chart 1. Interesting, but what does it tell us? Revenue is low because unemployment is high and the economy is in a slump. Not a shocker there.

So you concede this one with a shrug and by pointing out that it's "not a shocker." I'll take it. I guess we're done, oh wait, I see you have more...

[Chart 2: "The US has much lower taxes than other developed countries]

Chart 2. Also interesting. Especially given how much money we spend, I'm thinking it's because our GDP is so high that gives us a smaller share.

So the US is low tax, as per the claim, but because we have a high GDP, this some how effects the claim? Of course it doesn't. And it makes perfect sense to look at taxation in relation to GDP. Perhaps if you were aware that many of those countries to the right on that chart (higher taxes) also have a higher GDP per capita, than the US you wouldn't have said this. So while your excuse is irrelevant to the claim you are attempting to rebut, it also is wrong.

...we know that local and state taxes have been doing nothing but going up, and there's a ton we can cut federally on military and worthless departments.

Actually, we don't know that. I find taxes in Arkansas extraordinarily low, and quite a bargain. The teabagger and Paulist movement is based wanking about high taxes, but as this chart shows (and I have provided no end of evidence for this in this thread), these people are just factually incorrect and profoundly, stupendously ignorant of the facts with regard to taxes. Your reference to federal and military spending, while a nice wank, has no relevance whatsoever to the topic in question.

So I'm not sure what this chart is really telling me.

Really? It's rather simple (and you've pretty much conceded this out of the gate). As per the claim in the title, it shows that in relation to other peer countries, the US is low tax. What part of that is giving you difficulty? The part about your being unable to refute it? Yes I think that's it.

Also, it's easy to have "low" taxes when you're borrowing 40% of what you spend instead of taxing the people for it.

Yes, because these other countries don't borrow money when in a Great Recession do they? Your claim doesn't address the assertion at all. Again you show you haven't examined this issue very closely. Many of those countries to the right on this chart (higher taxes), also have higher, or very similar levels of debt. Try again.

If we balanced the budget tomorrow using nothing but tax increases (just hypothetical, because that wouldn't be possible),...

A typical conservative mistake. Your claim is not true. You confuse (and this is very typical) debt, with deficit. If you deny this, I'll hold your hand and walk you through it.

[Chart 3: "Today's top tax rates are historically low"]

Chart 3. This doesn't belong in the argument at all. First off, it doesn't compare us against the rates in other countries,

a) That's funny. Showing that our top tax rates are historically low (which they are), isn't relevant to the claim that the US is, present day, low tax? Sorry, not buying it.
b) Right, not every chart shows our current tax situation in relation to other countries, some charts in this list show the US is low tax in relation to US historical precedent.

next the marginal rate alone doesn't tell us much, and it's only talking about personal income tax...which is one tax of many.

You want to hand wave away the category of "income tax" because it is "one of many?" That's absurd of course. You really ought to think about things before you post them. Typing words in a row don't necessarily an argument make. The tea doesn't get weaker than this.

In other words, this chart gives no information that supports us being a "low tax" nation.

This chart obviously goes beyond the concise assertion in its 12 word title to show that not only is the US low tax in relation to other countries, it is also currently low tax in relation to its own historical precedent. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Teabaggers and Ron Paulists don't like this because it rather cuts the nuts off of their main plank and reason for existing. Next:

[Chart 4: "Taxes on investments are also historically low]

Chart 4. This chart also doesn't compare our capital gains taxes with other countries. So is this low? Compared to what?

Compared to our historical precedent. This makes a farce out of your main conservative wank: that taxes are too high.

The past? Yeah, I can see that. But chart 2 is comparing us to other countries. So what comparison are we making here?

Hey, when you don't have an argument, best to just be quiet about it and not tackle a list like this if you don't have any water for your squirt gun.

[Chart 5: Tax on large estates has virtually disappeared.]

Chart 5. Same as 4.

Meaning, you don't have any way to rebut or deal with the fact that example #5, like example #4, provides us yet another reason to understand that the US is currently, low tax.

[Chart 6: "Wealthy and superwealthy's tax rates have plunged."]

Chart 6. This isn't a surprise, given that the wealthiest are making most of their money from investments taxed at 15%.

When your response to an opposing argument is reduced to "this isn't a surprise," that's not exactly a counter argument, it's a concession. I'll take it.

Also, The chart and the description have a discrepancy that needs to be addressed. The chart says the red line is households with more than $1M in income, and the description says "millionaires". Those aren't the same thing. I assume that the chart reflects the former and the description is wrong, but if that's not the case, then the chart is meaningless.

I really enjoy this one. So while it's obviously the case that overwhelming those making over $1 million per year, will be millionaires, because it isn't so in every single case and there will be a few exceptions, the "chart is meaningless?" That is a good one. I hope you stick around Mr. Ghost, I am quite enjoying your softballs.

[Chart 7: US corporate tax has steadily declined.]

Chart 7. We need more information to determine what's going on here.

No I don't think so. You just don't like what this chart shows.

Many US companies have business units outside the United States that aren't subject to US tax, but their earnings are disclosed in aggregate. So we need to know what this chart is actually measuring.

The chart is measuring corporate tax revenue as a share of GDP. This shows the Teabagger Paulist wank of high US corporate taxes is just more rightwing ignorance (68% of US corporations don't pay tax and out of the top 30 nations in the OECD, the US comes in 4th from last in collection).

Also, it's really all moot, corporate tax rates should be zero because corporations can't pay taxes.

If corporations can't pay taxes, why are the Teabag Paulists always wanking about the US taxing corporations too much? I can bury you in examples if required.

Seven down, three to go...

[Dardedar]

Continued...

[Chart 8: US raises much less from corporate taxes than other countries[/quote]

Chart 8. This chart is deceiving because it says we generate "much less" revenue from corporate taxes than "other countries". Yeah, it looks like just a few. The rest we seem to be right in line with.

More weak tea and non-rebuttal. Two points:

1) 68% of corporations pay no income tax.
2) The US has the fourth lowest corporate tax revenues among the 30 nations in the OECD.
http://tinyurl.com/3tvfook

That's makes it line of evidence a perfect candidate to be included in this list of ten. You boldly claim the "chart is deceiving" but you completely forgot to even attempt to provide any support your assertion. I'm so surprised!

[Chart 9: US corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals]

Chart 9. Similar arguments from 7 and 8 also apply here.

Meaning, you've got bupkis in rebuttal, again. That US corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals provides excellent evidence in favor of the affirmative made in this chart, and again you've got nothing.

[Chart 10: Tax breaks and tax loopholes have proliferated]

Chart 10. Best chart in the whole bunch, not a surprise, and shows exactly what's wrong with our government.

So then you go on to agree with the chart, but wank about why it is the case that the chart is true. So yet another concession. Little tip: perhaps you should have considered whether you actually had a case to make against these ten charts, before you began your endeavor?

But mostly, this is a bunch of cherry picked data.

Ah, the best for last. Each and every chart is perfectly relevant to the thesis that the US is, present day, low tax in relation to other countries and in relation to its own historical precedent. You in fact were reduced to conceding several of these charts as "obvious." The rest of the time you were shooting blanks as was easy to show. Not at any point did you attempt to show anything is an example of the fallacy of cherrypicking. But hey, it's always good to throw in an unsupported charge of a fallacy before you go. None of your posts would be complete with out it.

So glad to have you around Ghost. Keep the softballs coming. Oh wait... I see a new one now...

[Dardedar]

More silliness from the Ghost.

On my middle class income, I'm paying about 35% of it to taxes. Federal, state, and local. I'm sure the figure is conservative,...

Hey, keep voting for conservatives and they'll make you pay more, and Warren Buffet pay less. Or better, they'll lower your taxes, borrow more and pass it on to your kiddies, with interest. See G.W. Bush who alone is responsible for about half (seven trillion) of our total debt. You voted for him didn't you?

I don't have a good way to quantify all of the extra little taxes like those on alcohol or franchise fees on utility bills.

How is that relevant, to anything? Buying alcohol is voluntary and hardly covers the cost to society and the fees on utility bills are a bargain. Rightwingers, they like living in a society but they'll be damned if they have to pay for it! Pathetic.

It's also impossible to quantify the amount of the corporate tax I'm paying that's buried in the goods and services I buy,...

Same as above.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if I was actually paying about half of my income to taxes. Hardly what I would consider to be low.

A standard conservative canard, and not true. For instance, the actual federal percentage collected, minus you dreaming about taxes buried in your box of Cornflakes, from the conservative Tax Foundation:

"The average tax rate in 2008 ranged from around 2.6 percent of income for the bottom half of tax returns to 23.27 percent for the top 1 percent."

"The average tax rate in 2009 ranged from around 1.9 percent of income for the bottom half of tax returns to 24.0 percent for the top 1 percent."
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

A bargain, and as shown throughout this thread, quite low when compared either to other countries or our historical precedent.

[Dardedar]

On my middle class income, I'm paying about 35% of it to taxes. Federal, state, and local. I'm sure the figure is conservative,...

When I saw this cartoon I thought of Mr. Ghost and his hand wringing about his taxes. I hope it doesn't commit any fallacies:



"I fault the law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall
federal taxes at a rate that's about half what the average person in my office pays."
Romney makes his money the same way I do. He makes money by moving around
big bucks, not by straining his back or going to work and cleaning toilets or whatever.
He makes it shoving around money." -- Warren Buffett, slamming Willard's idle-rich money-grubbing

Via: http://www.bartcop.com/