Do We Need A Tax Bracket For The Super-Rich?

[dtotire]

I would suggest a minimum of 60Z, or go back to the rates when Nixon was president--70%.



Do We Need A Tax Bracket For The Super-Rich?

Should someone who makes $400,000 a year pay the same effective tax rate as someone who makes $40 million a year? In a recent CNBC spot, two analysts recently took up the debate, which has taken on a new urgency as lawmakers and pundits ponder the Bush tax cuts and the mounting Federal deficit.

The increasingly prominent debate highlights a contentious fact about America's tax system: it doesn't distinguish between the rich and the super-rich.

Currently, the U.S. tax system sets the minimum annual income of the highest tax bracket at $375,000, with a tax rate of 35 percent. The second-highest bracket starts at $172,000 for individuals, who pay 33 percent. "This means that someone making $200,000 a year and someone making $200 million a year pay at similar tax rates. LeBron James and LeBron James's dentist: same difference," New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki recently observed.

In the CNBC spot, Michael Linden, an expert at the progressive think-tank the Center for American Progress, argued the U.S. should add income tax brackets for those making $1 million, $5 million and over $10 million a year, . While Daniel Mitchell, a fellow at the conservative think tank the Cato Institute, said the super rich should pay the same tax rate as the moderately rich, the middle class, even the poor. (Scroll down for the video)

In a recent New York Post article, Mitchell argues that separate tax brackets for the super-rich will penalize investors and entrepreneurs and "slow the economy," creating "genuine hardship for the working class and poor." Arthur Laffer, a former Reagan administration economist, similarly claims in a WSJ op-ed that higher tax rates for the rich will create more poverty.

Mitchell and Laffer's trickle-down notion sides with the super-rich at a time when debate over the tax code's role in the economic recovery has become particularly heated. In a New York Times op-ed last week, Paul Krugman warned that full extension of all the Bush tax cuts would cost the government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years, based on measurements by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Krugman adds that the center estimates that "the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent." This just so happens to be, as Surowiecki noted, the same echelon of super-rich who saw their share of national income triple between 2002 and 2007.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/do-we-need-a-tax-bracket-_n_691842.html

[SharonAnn]

1. "Yes,", "Yes", and "Hell, Yes".

[CanonRay]

2. Yes, 90% like it was in the 50's

Fuck em. And no offshore bullshit, either. Yes, it is class warfare, and we're losing.

[aquart]

3. No man should be so rich he has nothing left to buy but his government.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Theoretically Buffett and Gates would agree...

[Dawson Leery]

5. Simplify the tax code.

Along these lines:

Many brackets, no deductions.

$20,000 or less = no tax

$20,001-$50,000 = 12%

$50,001-$75,000 = 18%

$75,001-$125,000 = 25%

$125,001-$175,000 = 28%

$175,001-$250,000 = 33%

$250,001-$500,000 = 35%

$500,001-$1,000,000 = 39%

$1,000,001-$2,000,000 = 42%

$2,000,000-$5,000,000 = 45%

$5,000,001-infinite = 55%

[denverbill]

6. I say impose whatever rate is necessary in order to pay for the wars.

The 'war' on terror and the 'war' on drugs. Then watch how quickly Republicans want to end the wars.

[w4rma]

13. Exactly. Calculate the rate that we need to tax them at and pay off our national debt

at a decent clip. And tax them at that rate.

[T Wolf]

7. Add brackets at the top - every $100,000 over whatever gets a 1%, 10%, ?% increase in marginal rate.

There IS NO REASON why anyone needs to "make" millions of dollars a year.

And those grabbing that much are not the real contributors to society. Surgeons do not make 8-figures.

Only those who generate income off of other people's money pull down those kinds of obscene incomes that (IMO) warrant and richly deserve almost complete confiscation. They are destructive to society in so many ways that they should not be allowed.

That's my belief and I'm sticking to it.

[KansDem]

8. Do we even need the "Super Rich?"

What purpose do they have in today's world?

But to answer your question, the super rich should pay more because they are...super rich.

And this is horseshit:
...separate tax brackets for the super-rich will penalize investors and entrepreneurs and "slow the economy," creating "genuine hardship for the working class and poor."

The super-rich were granted special status with Reaganomics and Bush's tax cuts. They chose to stiff the workers and middle class when they took their new-found swag to foreign banks and markets.

Whoever says giving the rich more money will mean more investment in this country is flat-out lying. We tried it their way; it didn't work.

[bergie321]

9. My Idea

95% tax rate set at a level that is 100 or 200 times the median income level in America. Make the level slide every year based on the average. That way, if the super-rich want a raise in the "maximum wage" they need to raise their employee's salaries.

[safeinOhio]

14. My Idea, really, I mean your idea

gets my vote.

[Prophet 451]

10. Yes

I would suggest 50% on sums above a million, 60% above five mil, 70% above ten mil. It tops out at 90% for incomes above twenty mil a year.

[Vincardog]

11. Tax everything over $10M a year at 50% everything over $20M a year at 60%

everything over $30M a year at 70% everything over $40M a year at 80%
everything over $50M a year at 90% everything over $60M a year at 90%
And everything over $70M a year at 99%


Take the same rates and apply them to estate taxes
ditto for capital gains interest income and any other deferred income they use to hide income.

[tinrobot]

12. Raising capital gains is the only real solution

Do you think someone who makes $200 million/year takes it as W2 income? Of course not, they take it in stock options and other tax dodges. If you raised the capital gains tax, it would affect these people the most.