Posted on 02/22/2012 5:46:16 PM PST by ConservativeStatement
Only half of U.S. citizens pay federal income tax, according to the latest available figures.
In 2009, just 50.5 per cent of Americans paid any income tax to the federal government - the lowest proportion in at least half a century.
And the number of people outside the tax system could have climbed even higher since as the economic downturn has continued to bite and unemployment has remained high.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Again, another misuse of government power and a mis-targeting of IRS investigative resources. You take that same amount of money spent on dealing with that scam and put it on Warren Buffett’s tail and you’d gotten 10 times the return!
We need to have folks stop this thing of dehumanizing the American people with the thought that they are just a tax base to be tapped.
The figures today aren’t much different than they were back in 1913 which is the primary reason the proponents sold the income tax with the idea that it would target ONLY the top 1 or 2 percent. Today it targets almost everybody and serves as an instrument of class warfare. It is used by the agents of the rich to destroy wealth accumulation opportunities of those lower down the income scale.
Nobody thinks of FICA as anything but a tax. The legal justification for collecting it is based on the 16th amendment, same as the other income taxes.
FYI, this FICA tax is actually split by employee and employer. Employee pays 6.3 in retirement account of Social Security and 1.35 into Medicaid account. Employer is required to match. So, they do not pay 15.3 unless they are self employed. They pay 7.65
There are a whole lot of people out there eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit.
These people get 6-7+ thousand dollar tax refund checks. So if they work, they aren’t really paying any taxes. They are cleaning up out of your pocket.
All you have to do is visit Best Buy or Walmart and watch them loading a couple giant HDTV’s into their cars at a time.
And if that don’t make you sick. You also get to help pay their cable internet bills, buy their food, help them heat their houses, and pay for their cellphone bills. Whatta country!
FICA has a specific reason for being, but congress has bastardized it over the decades. It was brought into being as a combination safety net and insurance program when the actuarial tables ensured that it would not become a "retirement plan" for everyone. Call it what you will.
But congress has morphed it into nothing but a criminal enterprise no different than what Bernie Madoff did. No, I take that back. Madoff was more honest than the government. With Madoff, the contributions to his "plan" were voluntary. The government will fine, jail or even kill you if you don't contribute to FICA if you're working.
But that does NOT change the fact that this thread refers to one thing... Federal Income Taxes. And others keep trying to turn this into a conversations about their own pet peeves.
Mark
Absolutely correct, but I bet it's very rare that an employer tells that to the new employee, and if the employer matching requirement were rescinded right now and the entire burden placed openly on the employee, do you think the employer is going to raise her actual salary or hourly wage? I wouldn't bet on it. It might for future hires, but for current?
The problem is not that these people aren't paying their fair share, the problem is that the government is just too damn big and government spending is out of control.
Yes, yes the federal government is too big and is spending way too much money. So, now all you have to do is convince a significant majority of Americans who are benefitting from the government's largess to give that up. Just how many people benefitting from entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are going to willingly take a cut in their benefit? There are people here on FR that get very excited whenever a cut in SS is mentioned. They worked and paid into that ponzie scheme and they darn sure are going to get theirs.
Then get a super majority in the House and Senate or a same-minded President to slash the budget down to it's Constitutional limits. I don't see that ever happening honestly. The spending horse has left the barn. For every expense in the budget there are voters who wanted them there. Politicians want to be re-elected and the easiest way to do that is to buy votes with the public treasury. And with no death of the highly left wing biased MSM in sight, the propaganda they spew definitely won't be toward limited government.
The Democrats did the biggest damage they could with the gigantic spending at the beginning of this administration knowing that the increased spending would end up getting baselined for future budgets.
What do you think the chances are of removing the payroll tax reduction that's now 2 years running. You saw the stink the MSM put on anyone daring to state that it's unsustainable.
Just my 0.02
Among the Tax-takers (getting tattoos on their backsides)
American Thinker ^ | Earl Wright
And those people believe that is their money; they have a right to it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2753527/posts?page=1 AND MORE on the way. See —> **EITC Campaign Strategy 2011**
Letter from Department of Social Services:
The Goal of the EITC Campaign is to:
Cut the number of Californians who miss out on the EITC in half by 2013 by ensuring that 400,000 more Californians apply for the EITC than in 2009.
EITC 2011 Campaign Strategy - cont’d
http://www.cafoodbanks.org/EITC.html
“Everybody should pay something.”
I’ve heard it said that only about 50% of wage earners pay federal taxes, but I’m not so sure... I can only judge by my own experience:
My family consists of 2 had just over 23,000 in income last year but we paid about 650 in federal taxes. So although we are pretty low on the income ladder we paid. Makes me wonder who exactly is NOT paying federal taxes, beside the unemployed, I mean.
And fed taxes are not all the taxes we pay by a long shot. I sat down last year and tallied up all the money that went straight to the government in one form or another, and it came to 35% of our gross yearly income. Government truly is a fat leech on the back of every working american. It’s killing us for sure.
Disgusting, isn’t it? My cousin is an attorney and he was the one who told me how some people are making a killing on EITC.
He told me a big favorite for the EITC crowd was getting their whopper check, spending it first, and then filing bankruptcy instead of paying their bills with it.
Supposedly courts watch for that. Somehow I kind of doubt that anymore. LOL
Disgusting, isn’t it? My cousin is an attorney and he was the one who told me how some people are making a killing on EITC.
He told me a big favorite for the EITC crowd was getting their whopper check, spending it first, and then filing bankruptcy instead of paying their bills with it.
Supposedly courts watch for that. Somehow I kind of doubt that anymore. LOL
When you rob Peter to pay Paul your going to get Paul’s vote every time.
No, actually there are still enough courageous Americans who love their country that it will merely take us full circle, and return us to **1776**. As the great Ronald Reagan would say, “Why not? After all, we’re Americans.”
She likely did not reach anywhere near the average deduction threshold. That is not married, no kids.
Oh, and FICA is distinct from Income Tax. As are all the other taxes that are not mentioned. For example, because there are corporate taxes, products are more expensive than they would be otherwise, so *if* a corporation pays taxes, then anyone who does business with them is paying an indirect federal tax, but not Income Tax.
Likewise, government deficit spending is a “future tax” which must eventually be made up for with government revenues. In effect, guaranteeing future high taxes to pay for things right now.
It is like someone stealing your credit card to buy a car, then giving the car to you as a “gift”, for which they expect you to use your money to buy them a car back. You only see the money you spend right now (Income Tax), and have no idea that you are about to get an enormous bill in the mail, which you will have to pay back to your cc company.
I have to quibble a little bit about 65+ paying Income Tax, because typically that is usually not Income Tax per se, but capital gains tax. That is, unless they are still employed.
This confuses things somewhat, because IT and CG, while on the same form, use very different rules and function independently from each other. With congressional approval the CG rate can jump up or down almost whimsically, but it is a huge effort to change the Income Tax brackets.
For example, with the economy in downturn this year, CG has just plummeted. No profits, no taxes. So even if someone is a multimillionaire, and ordinarily would have substantial CG, they wouldn’t pay much of anything. But to say that they are not paying “Income Tax” creates a false impression.
Much depends on where you live in the US. For example, in parts of Florida, $25k would be very good income and a family could live pretty well. In NYC, $25k wouldn’t even be enough to live on if a single person was living in a rent controlled broom closet.
So the feds average it out. On average around the US, a single breadwinner family with two kids can barely scrape by, but if they have to pay income tax, they need financial support. So it’s just cheaper not to tax them in the first place.
Is it or is it not a TAX ON INCOME?
The fact of the matter is that all wage earners pay income taxes. They may not realize it, but they do. They pay additional graduated income taxes over and above the FICA and Medicare taxes, but no matter how you slice it, FICA is an INCOME TAX.
The Fair Tax will fix this - and put the IRS on unemployment!
OASDI and Medicare are technically not TAXES; they are deductions for defined benefit plans!
If they were, you would be able to claim them as taxes paid. The ones not paying Federal Income Taxes are a combination of seniors not having alternate sources of income and receiving OASDI, people on SSDI, SSI, EITC, AFDC, Section 8, WICs, SCHIP, SNAP and on and on and on.
It is the reason why Obama got elected, possibly why he might be re-elected.
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