Pelosi - You make make this stuff up

[Skipper the cigar aFISHinodo]

Buffet is a sensationalist and an exception.

I'll bet most of the rich pay 50% if the 1040 reportable income.

then there's the person making only $35,000 per year paying 8%. Can't afford decent housing and clothes and food in NY. But they have a brand new i-phone. And this is not so much an exception. I see it every day.

Every phone I have ever had is the free one you get for signing your life away.

[ScoopLV]

I'll bet most of the rich pay 50% if the 1040 reportable income.

I'll take that bet. Any stakes you care to name.

To clarify -- 50% plus one of the America's billionaires pay at least 50% of their reportable 1040 income in taxes.

Let's start out with a small bet, like the gross national product of Japan.

[Skipper the cigar aFISHinodo]

I'll bet most of the rich pay 50% if the 1040 reportable income.

I'll take that bet. Any stakes you care to name.

To clarify -- 50% plus one of the America's billionaires pay at least 50% of their reportable 1040 income in taxes.

Let's start out with a small bet, like the gross national product of Japan.

OK, I'm done (again)... I can't argue with distortion and prejudged beliefs.

Or should I say OK, You're on. Prove it!

(I am amazed how many people drink this cool aid..)

[Jimmie the Mum]

Either way, speaker Nancy Pelosi is a dumb ASS.

[size=2]If you want to help out the economy, then go ahead and it give your hard earned money away so the lazy bastards don't have to do a thing to earn it but don't come and tax me to death.[/size]

[ScoopLV]

[user=35]Skipper the cigar aFISHinodo[/user] wrote:

OK, I'm done (again)... I can't argue with distortion and prejudged beliefs.

Or should I say OK, You're on. Prove it!

(I am amazed how many people drink this cool aid..)

What have I distorted? You said most of the rich pay half their income every year to the Federal Government.

I think that's ridiculous. As Leona Helmsley famously quipped, "Taxes are for the poor."

If the rich actually paid half their income to the IRS, they wouldn't stay rich very long. Under the current system, the top 5% aren't carrying nearly enough water. And the "you and me's" of the world, who are making less than $250,000 per year pay the bulk.

I think one of the problems is that we have different opinions on what constitutes "rich." When I say rich, I mean rich. More than $1 million in dividends per annum. People who worry about dipping into capital. A Van Gogh collection. You know, rich.

Do you really think Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros write a check for half their income to the IRS every year?

[Not A Nice Person]

[user=118]Not A Nice Person[/user] wrote:

. . . but when we're talking that top 5%, we're talking people with three or more fully staffed homes, favorite restaurants in five countries, private jets, and multigenerational family trust funds.

Honk if that's you. [really]

NANP™
[cigar]

'Zactly.

[Parkster]

I pay 20% on every penny up to £34,000 and 40% tax on every penny I make over £34,000, I also pay National Insurance (this is supposed to provide me with health care and social security as well as a State pension when I retire ..... all of which is worth as much as the font I just typed) I also pay tax on EVERYTHING I purchase, and this works out to around about 70% of my total income in total. If I choose to save the remaining 30% of my income, I will be taxed on the profits and if I die, my daughter will be taxed on the inheritance ........ this one really gets me as in my opinion, I have already paid tax on the money in the first place, but lets not go there for the moment.

I have been really interested in moving to the states for exactly this reason, my own country is bleeding me dry in order to fund the social security for illegal and legal immigrants who have no intensions of actually working and contributing as most of them have no spoken or written English .............. they all have cell phones though ........ go figure.

3.5m unemployed (both British born and recent arrivals) yet I still cant get served in a supermarket line.

My point is .......... immigration is a good thing if those who wish to come to your country wish to contribute to it. Immigration is not supposed to be a meal ticket that either the rich or the working middle class should have to fund.

As for the rich (the real rich) paying their taxes .......... the real rich are just like the real poor ......... they both know how to work the system to suit themselves. I dont believe for one minute that the likes of Bill Gates pays 50% of all of his income in taxes, I cant prove it, but if I could then so could others and then I have no doubts that they would all be in the clink for non payment of taxes.

Example of working the system:

I have just finished reading an article in my motor sport press that nearly EVERY Moto GP rider in the world has an address outside of their home country just to avoid paying income tax. They also dont pay tax in their adopted country of residence either, but manage to spend JUST under the time required for each taxable year in each of these countries, so £19,000,000 a year to Valentino Rossi for example, is £9.5m his country is losing in taxes if their system is the same as the USA.

I have no doubt that the real rich do exactly the same along with other loop holes to avoid paying the full tax bill. They can afford to not pay tax ......... we cant.

 

[Skipper the cigar aFISHinodo]

the writeoffs that seem to have everyones nickers in a twist (like that Parkster?) is no different than paying taxes. Donations to hospitals, investments, sponsoring highway cleanup, etc etc etc. It costs the "rich" money to do this and it benefits the government and the little people. It creates jobs, provides for the poor, etc etc. That is why it is a deduction.

Now, anyone taking political or tax advice form Leona Helmsley... well, need I go on?

[Not A Nice Person]

http://www.askquestions.org/articles/taxes/#02

Note that the top 400 taxpayers only paid 27% of their income in taxes:



And then consider that under the US tax code, dividends don't count as income .. . but that's exactly how most CEOs take the bulk of their increasingly inflated compensation packages:



Rob has talked, on this subject, about "nostalgia" being illusory . . . but compare how much of the federal budget corporations accounted for when I was a kid, compared to now:



We took a wrong turn, somewhere. I certainly don't think asshats like Pelosi have the answers for how to get this country back on track . . . but I don't think letting the corporations and old money families continue to strip mine the rest of us for cash is the answer, either.

NANP™
[cigar]

[Parkster]

Sorry Skip, but my example showed that Mr Rossi pays NO tax in any of the 2 countries he lives in, the loop hole being that he does not reside in any of them for the required minimum amount of days to qualify to pay tax, therefore he pays zero in both.

If I can stay out of my country an extra 120 days per year I can also claim my tax back (I say claim it back because I am made to pay it in advance), but the truth is that I cant afford to stay out of the country for an extra three months vacation in any calendar year, I'm not nearly rich enough to vacation for quarter of the year, so I have no choice but to pay tax. Catch 22, if I did not have to pay tax I could afford to holiday for 120 days per year.

As for the right offs, they are voluntary, my taxes are not, and I was under the impression that neither was anybody elses taxes. In the UK the right offs are also tax deductable, so in the end the right offs cost less than the tax ............. they get to make money (ie pay less tax), it does not cost them anything in the long run.

Personally, I think it should not be a grey area, if you want to make a charitable donation, then do so, charity is a good thing, but its not charity if its a means to benefit yourself financialy, that just makes it a scam imho.

Regardless of donations etc etc blah blah blah ............ EVERYBODY should pay their taxes first, no exemptions. I dont get a warm and fuzzy feeling because somebody with more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes has donated $100,000 to charity ............. they probably made that in interest while supping on a latte for breakfast .............. the same as a working man donating $5 for example.


Sorry, but I reckon I work my ass off and I pay for the privilage, if I want to or not.