Are the Rich Really Taxed Less Than Secretaries?
NO QUESTION ABOUT IT PRESIDENT OBAMA
WAS FLAT OUT LYING WHEN HE MADE HIS SPEECH IN THE ROSE GARDEN. His Rhetoric
doesn’t pass the smell test.be ###
National statistics show
millionaires by and large are paying taxes at a much higher rate than
middle-class families. And their income taxes make up a significant portion of the federal budget pie.
Data compiled by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center show households pulling in more than $1 million pay about 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes. By contrast, households making between $50,000 and $75,000 pay about 15 percent.
IRS statistics for tax year 2009 show the millionaires --
who make up a fraction of a percent of all taxpayers -- contributed more than 20
percent of total federal income tax revenue. That's about $180 billion in taxes
from millionaires, according to number-crunching from the National Taxpayers
Union.
For those wealthy Americans paying taxes at a seemingly low rate, it could be because they earn income overseas or because a large part of annual income is from investments. Though corporate profits are taxed at 35 percent, in the form of capital gains and dividends they are taxed at 15 percent. Senate testimony in May from the Tax Foundation also showed that for taxpayers making more than $200,000 a year, their salary income made up just 20 percent of national salary income. Much more came from business income.
In total, the Obama deficit-reduction package would seek to raise taxes, mostly on high-income households, by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.
About half of that is from letting the Bush tax cuts expire for households making more than $250,000. Other changes would strip tax breaks for oil and gas companies and other benefits.
The White House would not say how much might be raised from the Buffett Rule or how it would be implemented.
But the Buffett Rule quickly became the rallying cry for the president's plan. In an email to supporters sent Monday night, the campaign urged voters to get the president's back on the plan.
The president's plan was presented as a proposal to the bipartisan "super committee" trying to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings by Thanksgiving.
The plan includes more than just tax hikes. It covers $580 billion in cuts to entitlement and other federal programs, including to Medicare and Medicaid. The president also claimed $1.1 trillion in savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a claim that has been dismissed as a budgetary gimmick in the past. If the war savings are counted alongside interest savings and the cuts Congress enacted in August, the president's plan is worth than $4 trillion over the next decade.
"We call on Congress to immediately pass the president's proposal for job-creating investments, to ask the wealthy to start paying their fair share, to focus on the true causes of our long-term deficits, to reject any cuts to Medicaid or Social Security or Medicare benefits, and to stop scapegoating federal and postal employees and retirees for problems they did not cause," AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama makes it sound like there are millionaires all over America paying taxes at lower rates than their secretaries.
“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” Obama said Monday. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that.”
The data tells a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.
There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.
In his White House address Monday, Obama called on Congress to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion as part of a 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $3 trillion. He proposed that Congress overhaul the tax code and impose what he called the “Buffett rule,” named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
The rule says, “People making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay.”
“Warren Buffett‘s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it,” Obama said. “It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million.”
Buffett wrote in a recent piece for The New York Times that the tax rate he paid last year was lower than that paid by any of the other 20 people in his office.
This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.
The latest IRS data is a few years older – and it’s limited to federal income taxes – but it shows much the same thing. In 2009, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid on average 24.4 percent of their income in federal income taxes, according to the IRS.
Those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid on average 9.9 percent in federal income taxes. Those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid an average of 6.3 percent.
Obama’s claim hinges on the fact that, for high-income families and individuals, investment income is often taxed at a lower rate than wages. The top tax rate for dividends and capital gains is 15 percent. The top marginal tax rate for wages is 35 percent, though that is reserved for taxable income above $379,150.
With tax rates that high, why do so many people pay at lower rates? Because the tax code is riddled with more than $1 trillion in deductions, exemptions and credits, and they benefit people at every income level, according to data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’ official scorekeeper on revenue issues.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that 46 percent of households, mostly low- and medium-income households, will pay no federal income taxes this year. Most, however, will pay other taxes, including Social Security payroll taxes.
“People who are doing quite well and worry about low-income people not paying any taxes bemoan the fact that they get so many tax breaks that they are zeroed out,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “People at the bottom of the distribution say, but all of those rich guys are getting bigger tax breaks than we’re getting, which is also the case.”
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was pressed at a White House briefing on the number of millionaires who pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-income families. He demurred, saying that people who make most of their money in wages pay taxes at a higher rate, while those who get most of their income from investments pay at lower rates.
“So it really depends on what is your profession, where’s the source of your income, what’s the specific circumstances you face, and the averages won’t really capture that,” Geithner said.More
