Tax breaks for the rich?
People pay less taxes in lower and middle income brackets than those who earn more.
FACT
Ummm...
People in lower tax brackets also happen to earn less so they ought to be paying less.
Percentage-wise all of the loopholes, deductions, and (illegal) tax shelters lower the AGI of the rich enough to allow them to save many thousands on their taxes.
The change to dividend taxation makes the highest percentage paid on those 15%. For any low to middle level income earner they're saving next to nothing because their tax rate is already at that level. For the rich they'd would be paying up to 35% on federal income tax rate on those dividends now they pay 15% so it is only helping the rich and it helps them in a big way.
One of your rich people. VP Cheney earned well over $1 million and paid only 20% in federal income tax for his 2003 income. Which is only marginally more than most of the middle level income earners. Plus he also saved an additional 5% on his dividends.
Yep, those poor people are sure doing well compared to the rich that in pure monetary terms get significantly more relief in terms of tax breaks because of all of the loopholes and deductions they can use.
The average rich person saved tens of thousands of dollars wtih GWB's tax cuts for 2003. How many low inome earners do you believe saved that much on their taxes?
Those earning between $1 and $50,000 comprise 63.45% of all those filing tax returns for 2003. They earned ~29.29% of the income and paid 22.09% of the taxes.
Those earning between $50,001 and $200,000 comprise 34.20% of all those filing tax returns for 2003. They earned ~49.32% of the income and paid 51.54% of the taxes.
Those earning between $200,001$ and $10,000,000+ comprise 2.36% of all those filing tax returns for 2003. They earned ~21.39% of the income and paid 26.73% of the taxes.
All in all the disparity in tax payments towards the rich that you're crying about isn't all that onerous.
((* Ain't MS-Excel and the IRS tax stats site grand? *))Indeed rising health care costs are indeed on of the expenses that face the nation.
That said, the national debt was increased significantly by of the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan (that conveniently don't get included in the federal budget under GWB but do still get added to the national debt) in addition to the federal income lost because of GWB's tax cuts. For GWB's first 2 years in office the governments income from taxation was down $144 billion and at least $200 billion was spent on the war efforts. That's $344 billion. If we're relatively conservative and say there were similar taxation decreases for his second two years that would be $488 billion or just under 1/3 of the increase in the national debt since GWB took office. Military spending overall was the single largest increase in expenditures during his first term, increasing by over 14% between 2003 and 2004 so those increases also make up a nice chunk of the increase in the national debt.
GWB's first tax cut was targeted for giving the budgetary surplus money "back to the people". What he didn't tell you is that a budgetary surplus does not mean an ACTUAL surplus. In Clinton's last year in office there was indeed a $200+ billion dollar budgetary surplus, unfortunately that wasn't quite enough to pay off the interest on the national debt for that year so the national debt actually still grew by $18 billion.
Its funny that you say that.
The percentage of poor income earners has increased under GWB.
The percentage of middle income earners has increased under GWB.
The percentage of Rich has decreased under GWB, however, those that are rich have increased their level of wealth.
That's the GWB and "conservative" way of things now.
Again, the dollar amounts received by the poor that you reference doesn't come close to the dollar amounts received by the rich in terms of tax savings from the tax cuts, loopholes in the tax code, and (illegal) tax shelters.
Corporations, especially large ones continue to pay a smaller and smaller percentage of the overall taxes used to fund the government under GWB.
The super rich AND large corporations.
The GWB administration goes excessively out of its way to cater to large corporations to the detriment of the people of the country. The large oil companies, the large drug companies, and others.
The GWB administration is made up by far the highest number of multi-millionaires than any other administration in our nation's history.
The tax rates in Minnesota are actually considerably lower now than they were back in the 80s when we had some of the highest state income tax levels in the country.
