Uncle Sam Wants You: To Pay for Wars and Millionaire Tax Breaks.

[Joanne98]

There was a wonderful line once in an old movie. A very savvy and skilled old billiards player, a hustler, was about to take the money from a slick and smart-alecky young man who had just ridden into town. And as the hustler chalked his cue stick, and leaned over the table to take his first shot, he calmly and quietly said: “Young feller, the sharp edge of fate is about to descend upon your red hick’s neck.”

The sharp edge of fate is about to descend upon all our red hicks’ necks if we do not wake up. The biggest problem in the country today, one far greater than health care reform or the stimulus, is deficit reduction. I don’t mean the deficit. That’s merely the problem. The deficit is really only the bill. The question, the real problem is–who is going to pay the bill? Your share of the bill, should you accept it, and you don’t have any choice and the share owed by each of the roughly 305,000,000 Americans, is $40,000.

Did you get $40,000 worth of benefit from the deficit? Did you even get lower cost and totally reliable health care? Under merely the first of George W. Bush’s tax cuts and merely in the first year of those tax cuts, every millionaire got about $40,000 in tax breaks. And now you owe $40,000. You may say that, well, you really don’t have to pay it. It is merely an accounting figure, something on some government piece of paper. But it isn’t.
Your government is holding meetings right now in Washington, planning how to get that $40,000 from you that you graciously gave to all those millionaires. What do you mean you didn’t give it to them? You voted for George W. Bush. You may have voted for Reagan. You voted for Republicans to run the House and the Senate. They weren’t encumbered by “rules” about filibusters. They went right ahead with simple majorities and cut taxes for the rich and for corporations. Our tax revenues are now what they were 50 or 60 years ago. And the government is bigger. And thank god it is or we would all be living in tent cities right now instead of, shamefully, a few million.

Continued>>>
http://www.populistdaily.com/politics/uncle-sam-wants-you-to-pay-for-wars-and-millionaire-tax-breaks.html

Pretty good rant.

[jody]

1. Pay not only with taxes but with the blood of working Americans. n/t

[katandmoon]

2. K&R

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Author doesn't know the difference between a 'deficit' and the national debt,

[econoclast]

4. real tax cutting story from the Tax Policy Center

Tax Policy Center
Urban Institute & The Brookings Institution



Who Pays No Income Tax?

by Bob Williams on Wed 08 Jul 2009 08:00 AM EDT |


Nearly half of all families and individuals will pay no income tax this year. But who are they? It turns out that whether a taxpayer is single or married, is elderly, or has children makes a big difference. Nearly 47 percent of single tax units will owe no tax, compared with about 40 percent of joint filers and over 70 percent of household heads. About 55 percent of the elderly and tax units with children will pay no tax. Two factors primarily explain the variation: differences in income and available tax preferences.

Income is an obvious driver—virtually no one with income under $10,000 pays tax after taking the standard deduction and personal exemptions. The percentage of non-taxpayers in each category falls as income rises and top-bracket taxpayers almost always pay something. Still, a small percentage of those making a million dollars or more a year pay no income tax.

Singles and household heads earn a lot less than joint filers: their average income is under $30,000 compared with nearly $75,000 for couples filing jointly and they are much more likely to avoid paying income tax. Overall, over three-fifths of units with income between $20,000 and $30,000 pay no tax, compared with just one-fifth of those with income between $50,000 and $75,000.

Filing status also matters because of differences in exclusions, deductions, and credits. Among those with income between $40,000 and $50,000, for example, nearly three-fourths of joint filers, two-thirds of households with children, and three-fifths of the elderly owe no tax, compared with less than half of household heads and less than a tenth of singles. The impact of refundable child and earned income credits and the exclusion of most Social Security benefits clearly make their mark.

[classysassy]

5. The scheme

that the rich use to keep us at each others throats instead of seeing their slight of hands tricks ,we continue to bicker,when we should be holding the bastards accountable.