ECONOMICS 201 – TAXES

You may hear/read about this concept from time to time.
This being an election year, if you haven’t heard it yet – yoo will.

A popular liberal hobby horse is modification of the tax code.
Specifically, the liberals want to increase the tax RATE of those who have high income to pay for the extra services the government provides to those who have low income.

This impulse comes directly from Karl Marx, the author of communism.
Doo yoo see the word “common” in there?
It is a clue.
But I digress.

The all-too-common rhetoric is phrased as “tax the rich to help the poor”, or some such drivel.
So lets look at how many folks be “rich” and how many be po.
This will help us see who pays and who gets.

First, lets decide how much income qualifies you as “rich”.

Let’s look at the records from the IRS for some information.
The latest verified statistics from the IRS on individual tax returns are from 2003.

Would you say that any person or family that had an annual Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $100,000 or more would be considered “rich”?
Okay, here is how the numbers roll:

Total number of persons/families with AGI of $100,000 or more = 11,491,829.
This represents 8.74% of all individual federal tax returns.
These eleven million plus people paid 59.468% of the total federal income taxes.
This leaves 91.25% of all taxpayers to pay the other 40.53%.
Just to recap – 8.7 percent of all taxpayers pay almost 60 percent of all individual income taxes.

But, yoo say, an annual income of $100,000 is not enough to qualify a person/family as “rich”.
So let’s jack up our cutoff point to $200,000 per year.

Total number of persons/families with AGI of $200,000 or more = 2,609,461.
This represents 1.987% of all individual federal tax returns.
These two million plus people paid 21.678% of the total federal income taxes.
This leaves 98.01% of all taxpayers to pay the other 78.322%.
Just to recap – 1.98 percent of all taxpayers pay 21 percent of all individual income taxes.

As yoo kan see, the “rich” ALREADY pay a large percentage of federal income taxes.

Here is my worry – I do not know were the liberals are going to draw the line between “rich” and “poor”.
It is almost certain they will not draw it as high as I did here.
Why?
Because they cannot raise the tax rate enough on just these eleven million (or less) households to get enough additional money to pay for all the programs they want to finance.
The rest of the money will have to come from yoo and mee.

And remember, income taxes on businesses are already paid by yoo and mee.

Do not be fooled by talk about tax the “rich”.
It is a lie.
If you have an income – U R rich.

That sucking sound you hear is the federal vacuum hose nosing around your wallet.