Posted on 08/08/2011 12:45:01 PM PDT by SmithL
For some California Tea Party conservatives, it has become a favorite statistic: Nearly half of Americans - 46 percent - don't pay taxes. The number is used to back up their claim that if that many people don't pay taxes, why should the wealthiest individuals pay more?
It is accurate in a sense - 46 percent of U.S. households aren't expected to pay federal income taxes this year.
"But most of those people do pay federal taxes" of some sort, such as payroll taxes, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a center-left Washington think tank, and co-author of a widely cited report last month on who pays taxes.
Roughly half of those 76 million American households who don't pay federal income taxes are zeroed out because their income is too low, he said, while the other half - of all income levels - pay no federal income tax because of a variety of exemptions and loopholes.
"It's a much more nuanced story . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The real nuance is this: EITC. “The EITC is the largest poverty reduction program in the United States. Almost 21 million American families received more than $36 billion in payments through the EITC in 2004.”
My son paid no taxes, but got thousands “back”! Since I had coughed up an even greater amount in taxes owed, I pointed out I basically had given him thousands of dollars...so Happy Birthday!
Well we need a bit more green before we see yellow, and then a bunch of yellow to get through before we go green. Get it?
Me neither.
Government employees eat big, fat revenues, and defecate little, bitty ones.
Let’s provide a job and increase the minimum wage to where everyone pays income taxes. I’m sure the unemployed would be happy to pay taxes.
Thank you FRiend!
LLS
Only land owners should be allowed to vote.
"Which is more than they paid into FICA."
The people who track these statistics should take the refundable tax credits into account and figure out what percentage of people actually pay no total taxes.
>>> I use to do tax returns during tax season, but got so disgusted I had to quit, with these “poor” people who would come in and get a check back for $5000 when they paid little to nothing in during the year. It’s welfare and wealth redistribution disguised as a tax credit pure and simple.<<<
Remember George McGovern’s negative income tax proposal from 1972? Here it is.
Careful, your wealth envy is showing.
It sounds like from the article that the author agrees that roughly 46% of the people don’t pay taxes. So the Tea Party is correct.
No your wealth envy is showing. I’m on a yacht full of hookers creating jobs.
I know several young women who won’t get married to the father of their children just so they can get the big tax refund...
It means you need special Ivy League training to understand it, but you will still never be able to explain it to anyone else who lacks such training. You get the decoder ring in your Wheaties box when you graduate from an Ivy League. It's a word used chiefly to justify the position of government funded parasites with Ivy League degrees.
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