Hah - Sweden. They are only number 2 in the race. WE have the highest taxes in the world! Eat my dust, losers!

Jesper - the Dane ;)

Don't raise taxes on the rich, just restore them to what they were back before all this started (take your pick, 80s, 70s, 60s).
Since this is fast becoming government of the rich/corporations, they should pay for the bulk of it.
Eliminating a tax cut is not raising taxes anymore than saying the price of milk went up because it was on sale last week and this week it isn't.

"Since this is fast becoming government of the rich/corporations, they should pay for the bulk of it."

That's a silly statement. Damn near everyone is receiving some kind of government service. About a third of our population is receiving direct transfer payments of some sort. Most of the middle class benefits from, among other things, government-funded roads and highways. (Or, for those living in the Northeast corridor, subsidized transit.) And we all benefit from the national defense that makes it possible for us to debate this question.

"Eliminating a tax cut is not raising taxes anymore than saying the price of milk went up because it was on sale last week and this week it isn't."

So what is the "normal" tax rate? Since the price of milk always goes up, should taxes always go up? The top rate during WWII was 90%. Should that be considered the "normal" rate, and everything below that be considered a "tax cut"? The price of milk, over time, always goes up. Should taxes always go up? Would 100% be high enough? How about 200%? Hell, why not just confiscate all wealth and assets?

I'm always amazed at how leftists assume that the tax well is infinite, and that higher tax rates will always create more revenue. I once asked a leftist how any of the productive class would be expected to work under 100% taxation. His simple and chilling answer: "The government will make them work." To a leftist, taxation is not about revenue. It's about power. QED.

So we can discard any leftist statements like DrCos's out of hand, because they do not have our best interests at heart. For the rest of us, the question comes back to: how much government do we want, how much can we afford, and who pays for what? There's an awful lot of government that falls into the category of "who ordered this?" -- the group that directly benefits from it of course wants it to continue, but almost no one else does. I'm lookin' at you, Department of Education. And you, Department of Labor. Transfer-payment programs are going to be contentious, because for decades they have been able to escape any cost-benefit analysis. But they are now running out of other peoples' money. Expect to see an awful lot of moral posturing there.

And then there are programs like highways and defense, which most people would agree are mutually beneficial, but there's still the question of how much can we afford. Finally, there's the one truly non-discretionary expense: interest on the government debt. Although there are a few things we can do to manage that, ultimately it absolutely must be paid, even to the exclusion of nearly everything else, for the simple reason that the country won't survive an all-out default.

And finally, there is a factor which is not a revenue factor as such, and that's the sheer complexity of the tax system. The current federal income tax system hands the government an awful lot of power with very little accountability in the form of tax rule-making, by which it can influence economic activity by choosing specific things for punitive or lax tax treatment. This is an open door for abuse, and it needs to be shut. Plus, it has given rise to a whole cottage industry (actually, it's well on its way to being a "mansion industry") in tax law -- a field that by definition is completely and utterly unproductive, and it saps revenue from companies that they could be spending on hiring employees or investing in capital expenditures. And finally, the complex tax system is an open door for abuse, which we have seen many times. Right now, if your corporation is a Friend of Obama, you get favorable tax treatment. Does your union donate millions of dollars to Obama? If so, the company you essentially control, General Motors, gets a note from the Treasury allowing you to use an accounting method that's prohibited for everyone else, and your tax liability goes poof. On the other hand, if you're Boeing, and you have dared to challenge the supremacy of Washington... you know that $2B tax refund you're owed from taxes overpaid over the last decade? Oops, the IRS has found a technicality in your tax returns from that period, and you aren't going to get that refund. Too bad, so sad. Be more careful about opening new plants in right-to-work states next time.

Ah, yes, the Evil Corporations! The ones that provide so many of us with jobs...

One way to avoid creeping socialism is to make sure that everybody pays in something. That's sort of a subtext here... when 50 percent of the population learns it can vote itself more lollipops from the other 50 percent, that's when the slide to confiscatory socialism is inevitable.

We need to use poll tax and other taxes to make sure everyone is paying in.

Heres a thought, a flat 5% property tax on vehicles ad property, 10% income tax, and a flat 10% sales tax, 15% for any items over $15,000. No taxes on corperations except property and purchases, no deductions, no exemptions, no deferments.

and thats it 1/4 to your city, 1/4 to your county, 1/4 to your state, 1/4 to the fed.

in the case of purchase tax revenue would go to the municipalites in which the items were purchased. Sales tax for online purchases to go to the municipalites of the shipping zip code.
Example a person in califorina buys from on online store but ships it to Nevada, the collected tax goes to the city and county in nevada.

All this money goes into bank accounts. Example sales tax from 2011 gets deposited as collected, same with income taxes collected by corperations, self employed have until April 1 2012 to pay up what they owe. this bank account sits untouched for the rest of the year and is all the money avalible for the 2013 budget.

Embezzelment, misappropriation, anyone moves so much as a penny from the acount before Jan 1 2013 gets a 99yr prsion sentance adn all their personal assests are seized, sold at auction, reimbure the account for the ammount they stole and any monies left over are deposited into the next years budget account

"...the American people as a whole are receiving a dollar of government for the price of only 60 cents."
Man, I kept thinking this referred to the low value of the dollar. Okay, it makes sense as "40 cents of each dollar of gov't spending is borrowed". With that established, it's a much less hostile read for me :-)

"Since this is fast becoming government of the rich/corporations, they should pay for the bulk of it." ~ DrCos

I'm amzazed at the people who can get doctorates....

Okay, let's say General Electric gets hit with a 50% tax rate. Do you think the boardroom is going to snap their fingers and say "Oh shucks, looks like we aren't making as much money as we used to. That's okay, this new bottom line is an acceptable amount of profit"? Hell no. They are going to jack up the prices on what they produce by 50% (at least). The cost gets passed along. The shit rolls down hill. Corporations do not pay taxes - their customers do. The money is still coming out of the pockets of the public.

ah yes, which rich are we speaking of here? the upper 50% who pay 96.4% of all income taxes?

The US has one of the most progressive tax structures in the world, and that somehow isn't good enough?

If YOU want to pay more taxes DrCos... feel free, the IRS will take whatever check you send.

One big piece of the pie are social programs that are funded from those taxes, and yet pay a great deal out to people who essentially never paid into the syste. We MAY in fact want to have those programs, they may be of some use, but we should call them what they are; benefit entitlements.

One reason that we surely need, and definitely won't get, a straightforward tax system, is so that you can tell what you are paying, and what it's going for. The current system is designed to hide, to be a black box. So that everyone THINKS they are paying taxes, even when they aren't really. My ex is sure that she is paying taxes, but you should see what her refund is like. She gets a refund larger than all her witholdings and taxes put together, so she pays NO net taxes.

But she still bitches about it. As if it's costing her something.

Cousin Dave - A 'silly statement'? Do you pay attention to anything around you? The Supreme Court rulings on corporations as people regarding campaign contributions and siding with Wal-Mart in immunizing them against a class action suit?
Put the tax rates back where they were in the 60s, then you can call me silly all you want.
Oh and end all of the corporate welfare you blame on Obama but has been going on far longer than that.

ehw - Those corporations seem to be giving a lot of people jobs, yes. Too bad most of them are outside the US.

Elle - If GE got a 50% tax increase (or 500%) or as you say a 50% tax rate, they'd still pay what they paid last year - $0.00

SwissArmyD - No, I don't want to pay more taxes. I am unfortunately not in a high enough tax bracket to get these continuing tax cuts. Put the tax rates back where they were on EVERYONE.
Where do you get your 96.4% figure from?
Since the top 1% earners in this country make 90% of the money, it's not as skewed as one might think.

I am so happy that you people know me so well already. Silly and leftist, indeed.

"The Supreme Court rulings on corporations as people regarding campaign contributions and siding with Wal-Mart in immunizing them against a class action suit?"

Both entirely proper rulings. Believe it or not, the First Amendment applies to everyone, not just smug leftists. As for Wal-Mart, the question was whether the federal government can dictate every single management decision a corporation makes. The Supreme Court properly said no.

"Put the tax rates back where they were in the 60s, then you can call me silly all you want."

You do realize that back in the '60s, most wealthy people paid little or no tax? The system was shot through with loopholes back then. A 70% top rate would have been unsustainable if anyone had actually had to pay that rate.

"Oh and end all of the corporate welfare you blame on Obama but has been going on far longer than that."

And that excuses Obama's huge expansion of it, and the fact that he's using it for explicitly political purposes. Right.

"Those corporations seem to be giving a lot of people jobs, yes. Too bad most of them are outside the US."

Incentive and reward. Psychology 101.

"No, I don't want to pay more taxes. I am unfortunately not in a high enough tax bracket to get these continuing tax cuts. Put the tax rates back where they were on EVERYONE."

Dude, if you are where you say you are financially, you aren't paying any income taxes at all. You should thank your lucky stars for George W. Bush. If we go back to 1960s tax schedule, your taxes will go up substantially. And besides: you're a moral loser. You don't want to pay more taxes yourself. You want everyone else to pay more taxes so you can take more! What a loser!

"Since the top 1% earners in this country make 90% of the money, it's not as skewed as one might think."

Obviously, your Ph. D. program didn't include any math. Actually, I'm inclined to think at this point that you're a 19-year-old dropout posting from his mom's basement. Go back to watching American Pie 2 and let the adults talk.

[Cousin Dave] once asked a leftist how any of the productive class would be expected to work under 100% taxation. His simple and chilling answer: "The government will make them work." To a leftist, taxation is not about revenue. It's about power. QED. (emphasis mine)

My response would have been, "Then you would have no problem repealing slavery?" I would enjoy the stammering and twisting until they walked away. Last time I looked, slavery was abolished in the United States - but I guess it never made it into their little red books.

100% taxation is de facto wage abolishment - it's endorsing the money from all the hard work you did to the government for them to spend, and likely that money would be funneled to their personal bank accounts, to their buddies' campaigns, and other places. Or you might get a scrap here or there at the whim of the government.

That kind of narrow-minded, conceited thinking from the left - that the government can make use its power to make people work - is a lethal and dangerous fantasy.

Aiee...just realized I made a boo-boo...That quote should have read "Then you have no problem reinstating slavery?"

I wrote up something similar to this a few months ago. My plans are in two parts. Feel free to take a look.

http://clearysquared.blogspot.com/2011/07/for-advice-goddess-fans.html

I once toyed with the idea that we replace the whole federal tax system with a national sales tax and the rate of that sales tax would be computed based on whatever the most reasonable estimate of what sales would be compared to the budget. Basically, adjusted annually to maintain a balanced budget. I called it my "Share the pain" plan. The kicker is this: The adjustment would take place a month on something like Oct 1, just in time for people to feel the pain before election day.

Of course, the R & Ds would just nominate one-termers to get elected, jack up spending and get booted out to make room for the next one-termer because most Americans can't seem to stop voting for R or Ds no matter how many times they screw us over.

Cousin Dave - Entirely proper rulings? If you say so, seeing as how I must be a 19 yr old living in my mom's basement.
I'd rather be living in my mom's basement as I had no worries when I was 19. Corporations actually paid taxes and created jobs in THIS country back then. And the gap between CEOs and the peons on the shop floor was a LOT less than what it is now.
And the 1% - 90% figure is pretty accurate no matter what your favorite cable "news" channel tells you.

"I'd rather be living in my mom's basement as I had no worries when I was 19."

I have nothing further to add to this statement.

I don't have a problem with this argument. However, you could have lower rates for everyone, and still have a broader tax base, provided you get rid of all these deductions, exemptions and credits, including the mortgage interest deduction (from which I benefit, but am willing to give up as part of a deal).

Twitter

Here you go DrCos... from the Congressional Budget Office:
http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/graphics.cfm

but pay attention to this: "the highest quintile earned 55.9 percent of pretax income and paid 68.9 percent of federal taxes." Pg2 of the collection linked above.

But EVEN if they made 90% of all the money, so what? As long as they are paying the share they are supposed to, isn't that FABULOUS? You too could invent the next FaceBook or Angry Birds, or widget that makes everyone's life easier...
And :shokingly: be PAID for it. And if you want to give that money to your favorite charity you can do that, or even crazily enough, to the government, if you want to give them more.

If you watch the eb and flow of tax rates since, say Ford. the rates for the lowest have gone down and the highest ahve gone up and down and up, but it doens't change where the money comes from at the top... Next post for the other link...

The top 1% pay more income tax than the bottom 95% combined...

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/07/the-top-1-pays-more-income-tax-than-the-bottom-95.html

Just how are the poor, by definition people with no money, supposed to pay this 'sharp increase'?

Three things to think about that you might not have seen or remembered:

1) Poor people pay the taxes on the rich and on the corporations, when they buy products. This is because the poor do not understand money. No matter how big the hourly wage, it is fixed by someone else and is not your key to wealth.

2) A great question: How many Federal employees can you pay with taxes collected from other Federal employees?

3) You are not getting relief from those who can hand your tax money to people who will vote for them.

"The top 1% pay more income tax than the bottom 95% combined..."

That's because they have all the money.

The poor pay Social Security taxes, Medicare Taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes and property taxes. But I guess these don't count because they get a break on the income tax.

GE didn't pay any Federal Income tax last year, but there's no conservative outrage about that.

"The poor pay Social Security taxes, Medicare Taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes and property taxes. "

By and large they don't actually, except for the gasoline tax. There is no SS or Medicare tax on transfer payments (maybe there ought to be). A lot of the working poor work in the cash economy and they don't pay those taxes either. Gasoline is the one commodity they buy regularly that isn't subsidized and can't be obtained through the underground economy. I don't know how it is everywhere, but around here properties in depressed areas pay little or no property tax.