Monday, April 18, 2011

Tax Day: Half of the US Pays Nothing

In one sense this is misleading - everyone pays sales tax (at least, I assume so. Perhaps if you have a welfare check card it doesn't charge you sales tax...?)

In any event - it is scary. It's not just that 50% of Americans don't pay any Federal income tax, it's also that they are paid a considerable amount of money in subsidized rent and food stamps and so on. And that money comes from the 50% who do pay taxes.
RUSH: Stop and think about it, folks, even the tax code -- especially, I'd say, the tax code -- is used for will he distribution. Get this. Details coming up here in second. Well, actually these are the details of stories I've got in the stack coming up momentarily. The bottom 40% of American earners -- the bottom 40% -- on average, make a profit from the federal income tax. What I mean by that is, they get more money in tax credits than they would owe otherwise in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment: The earned income tax credit, the I-don't-have-a-school-lunch tax credit, the defeat-the-Republicans tax credit, the support-unions-and-Democrats tax credit.

There's all kinds of 'em out there, and they add up 40%. The bottom 40% of American earners make money off the federal government by virtue of redistribution. Where are they getting that money? They're not earning it; they're not paying any taxes. We tax everything. You know, we even tax unemployment benefits. But we don't tax the government. Now, I ran that as a test, and everybody on the other side of the glass (I can make them do this whenever I want) cocked their heads and frowned, 'cause everybody said: Why would the government pay taxes? That's the point. Government has this special place in everyone's heart.

It can go do things that you and I would be put in jail for -- and while it does so, it's considered to be heroic or compassionate or what have you. We don't tax the government. "Well, what would you do with the revenue if you did, Rush?" Keep 'em from spending it; pay down the debt. What if they had to pay taxes? Look, they're earning money or taking money or what have you. Just a little thought exercise. I know we're never gonna tax the government. It's not the point of my making the mention. My point is that government's the one entity that can do whatever it wants at any time to get money and print it, and, "Hey, cool!" as long as they're redistributing it to unions, or approved Democrat voters.

We're now (and you knew this was coming) taxing cigarettes so much that drug dealers and gunrunners are starting to get into the smuggling-cigarette business. I've got the story, and we have predicted this. We predicted a black market in cigarettes that was gonna rival the black market in drugs and guns, everything else because the tax revenue is getting so high. Where was it, some state the other day proposed lowering tax revenues on cigarettes, tax rates because they've reached the point now of diminishing returns? What's happening is that these cigarette smuggling operations are taking place in Virginia and in New York.

Now, I've got two stories here by the AP written by the same guy, a guy named Stephen Ohlemacher. One was written on April 7, 2010. The other one was posted yesterday. On April 7th Mr. Ohlemacher wrote: "Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem. About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization...

"The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment." Now, this is a story from last year. This April 7th of last year. The same guy has a story written this year, but last year: "Nearly Half of U.S. Households Escape Federal Income Tax." Now, this year Mr. Ohlemacher's story is: "For Richest, Federal Taxes Have Gone Down; For Some in US, They're Nonexistent." So they've got this whole story about how the rich aren't paying their fair share, the rich aren't paying enough, the rich are getting away with nothing -- and they bury the lede.


The lede is, again, that 45% of households do not pay any income taxes. "As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all." It seems to me that's the story. It seems to me that 45% of Americans paying no income tax at all is the story, especially when you balance that with when what you hear from the Democrats constantly is, "The rich aren't paying enough in taxes. The rich, those evil, dreaded rich, are getting away with bloody murder."

They're not paying! Their taxes are going down. Meanwhile, 45% of Americans pay nothing. "There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank," and, of course, now the media is totally on board with it! They're totally on board. This Mr. Ohlemacher guy is all for all of this. "In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer... More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007."

Yet their story focuses on how the rich aren't paying their fair share of taxes -- their story and their headline: "For Richest, Federal Taxes Have Gone Down; For Some in US, They're Nonexistent" -- yet halfway down the story: "More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent..." Now, how do you write a story focused on what the rich are getting away with when 45% of the non-rich are not paying taxes, and the top 10% of wage earners are paying over half the total tax revenue? "Eric Schoenberg..." Oh, yes. That's true. Wait for AP to go out and find a rich guy who thinks he's not paying enough.

"Eric Schoenberg says to sign him up for paying higher taxes. Schoenberg, who inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker, has joined a group of other wealthy Americans called United for a Fair Economy. Their goal: Raise taxes on rich people like themselves. Shoenberg, [sic] who now teaches a business class at Columbia University, said his income is usually 'north of half a million a year.' But 2009 was a bad year for investments, so his income dropped to a little over $200,000. ... 'I simply point out to people, "Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?"' Schoenberg said."

It depends on how it's earned and what the law is. Now, the Gallup people have a poll out here that those who pay taxes think that they are too high. "Half of Americans believe the amount they pay in federal income taxes is too high, while 43% consider it about right and 4% too low," and yet the AP goes out and makes a project out of finding rich people who think they're not paying enough, rich people that are unhappy with the tax code, rich people who think they're not getting screwed enough. That's our old buddies at AP, and yet Gallup says that half of those Americans who pay federal income tax say it's too high.




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In the interests of Order and Method: My Schedule of Regular Posts:
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day*Monday through Friday througout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.

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