The Budget Deal - Page 2

What lame drivel!

This was particularily revealing, shows just how troubled the repubs are, and how fearmongering is still their only platform to combat reason-

"Richard Miniter, a Forbes columnist, is right: Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev. Beneath the tattered, fading banner of reactionary liberalism, Obama struggles to sustain a doomed system. Democrats dependency agenda swelling the ranks of government employees, multiplying government-subsidized industries, enveloping ever-more individuals in the entitlement culture is buckling under an intractable contradiction: It is incompatible with economic growth sufficient to create enough wealth to feed the multiplying tax eaters."

A couple of interesting graphs showing the percentage of the taxes paid by corporations as a percentage of GDP and the total taxes paid as a percentage of GDP comparing different countries- http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...inal-chart.png

I don't have the original source of the graphs.

The second graph shows taxes at 23% of GDP but according to this (I can't get it to display, maybe it's not Mac friendly) it was at 15% in 2009-

"REAGAN:

1981: ...19.6%
1982: ...19.2%
1983: ...17.5%
1984: ...17.3%
1985: ...17.7%
1986: ...17.5%
1987: ...18.4%
1988: ...18.2%

H.W. Bush:

1989: ...18.4%
1990: ...18.0%
1991: ...17.8%
1992: ...17.5%

Under Clinton:

1993: ...17.5%
1994: ...18.0%
1995: ...18.4%
1996: ...18.8%
1997: ...19.2%
1998: ...19.9%
1999: ...19.8%
2000: ...20.6%

W. Bush:

2001: ...19.5%
2002: ...17.6%
2003: ...16.2%
2004: ...16.1%
2005: ...17.3%
2006: ...18.2%
2007: ...18.5%
2008: ...17.5%

Obama:

2009: ...14.9%
2010: ...14.9%
2011: ...14.8% (CBO projection)

link to government site- http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...s/hist01z2.xls "
~ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social..._90610844.html

No, he's at a dinner party raising funds for lobbying government

Oh, I'm sure that can be arranged-

► Adjusted Gross Income Shares for 1980 and 2009 (Percent of total AGI earned by each group):

Income Group—1980 / 2009
Top 1% -- 8.46% / 20.0%
Top 5% -- 21.01% / 34.73%
Top 10% -- 32.13% / 45.77%
Bottom 50% -- 17.68% / 12.75%

► Average Tax Rate for 1980 and 2009 (Percent of AGI paid in income taxes)

Income Group--1980 / 2009
Top 1% -- 34.47% / 23.27%
Top 5% -- 26.85% / 20.70%
Top 10% -- 23.49% / 18.71%
Bottom 50% -- 6.10% / 2.59%

► Total Income Tax Shares for 1980 and 2009 (Percent of federal income tax paid by each group)

Income Group--1980 / 2009
Top 1% -- 19.05% / 38.02%
Top 5% -- 36.84% / 58.72%
Top 10% -- 49.28% / 69.94%
Bottom 50% -- 7.05% / 2.70%

Thanks to WestTexan in The Guardian's comments- http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...rt-of-comments

The rest of his/her post is illuminating too-

► In 1952, the year I was born, corporation taxes accounted for 32.1% of US federal receipts. In 2009 they accounted for 6.6%.

On the flip side, in 1952 employment taxes* [payroll taxes?] accounted for 9.2% of federal receipts, and in 2009 they accounted for 42.3%.

The business secretary in the UK-

"Vince Cable has launched an extraordinary attack on "rightwing nutters" in America who are trying to block the raising of the US government's debt ceiling and who are, he said, a bigger threat to the world economy than problems in the eurozone."
~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...htwing-nutters

I suppose WalMarts upped it's pricing so much because it's paying very close to the full corporate tax rate?-

"Before taxes, the world's largest retailer banked $22.1 billion in profit. After deductions and factoring in its international operations, the company still paid just under a third of that back in taxes to various governments.

The federal tax rate for corporations is 35%. Wal-Mart's effective income tax rate came in just under that, at 32.4%"
~ http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/...lls/index.html

The Uk has VAT (value added tax) and an income tax. VAT is at 20%. Add just 3% for your unbelievably titled "Fair Tax" and you'll have to massively cut programs... you know, like defense and education, healthcare etc whilst making the poor and middle class pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes whilst the rich pay a much much lower percentage of theirs in taxes.

Like the info from posts above shows, the bottom 50% income earners in the US currently pay just 2.5% of their income in taxes. Do you think they save much? Nope they don't. They spend what thy have and often get into debt too. The rich on the other hand invest, save and many lavishly live, but that expenditure is a small piece of their income.

The rich would do great, the middle and lower would suffer, the debt would never be paid off and the economy would TANK.

Correction: the average income tax rate is about 2.5% for the lowest 50% income earners according to the earlier posted figures. The total tax rate for that group is somewhere around 10%. That's more than half yhe 23% figure of the "Fair Tax" and obviously the poorer ones in that group will pay even less of a percentage.

Yeah, fair enough, it does seem inappropriate.

One thing I noticed about that CNN link that I find curious was the Bank of America tax info. Apparently the tax payer bailed them out to the tune of $45 billion. When they then went on to make a ton of money, they wrote off the repayment of the $'s paid back on the $45 billion. That means that it will end up affording them the opportunity to pay no taxes on $45 billion of profits. Seems odd. Does that seem odd to you or am I missing something?

Why do you post that info, instead of always expecting someone else to?

Like you've ever supported any of your claims with facts!

Here's some info- http://mediamatters.org/research/201002020005

This from a poster from the Media Matters link posted above. And remember none of these were factored into the "effective" tax rate-

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly two-thirds of U.S. companies and 68% of foreign corporations do not pay federal income taxes, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined samples of corporate tax returns filed between 1998 and 2005. In that time period, an annual average of 1.3 million U.S. companies and 39,000 foreign companies doing business in the United States paid no income taxes - despite having a combined $2.5 trillion in revenue.

The study showed that 28% of foreign companies and 25% of U.S. corporations with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in sales paid no federal income taxes in 2005. Those companies totaled a combined $372 billion in sales for the largest foreign companies and $1.1 trillion in revenue for the biggest U.S. companies.
~ http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/12/news...rporate_taxes/