How Much of the Tax Deal Actually Goes to the Rich?
This is from Greg Scandlen’s Consumer Power Report newsletter:
One might think the country was shoveling money into the vaults of gadzillionaires. But the Washington Post breaks out the $990 billion, two-year cost of the agreement like this:
- $280 billion, extension of Bush tax cuts for middle-income earners
- $146 billion, capital investment write-offs for businesses
- $140 billion, indexing the alternative minimum tax
- $120 billion, payroll tax reduction
- $80 billion, R&D tax credits
- $79 billion, extension of Bush tax cuts for high-income earners
- $68 billion, on lower estate taxes
- $56 billion, extension of unemployment benefits
- $21 billion, extension of refundable tax credits (like EITC)
So the much-despised “tax cuts for the rich” amount to 8 percent of the total package.
I just wish I could keep more of what I earn. I have friends who pay the same amount in taxes each year despite having much higher incomes. The child tax credit, dependant exemptions and property taxes that build schools means that I’m paying for other people’s kids despite that fact that I have none.
As long as most Americans aspire to be rich, class warfare will never succeed.
You need to redo your math, it’s the 79 billion for high income earners and the 68 billion from lower estate taxes. That’s over 15% of the benefits to a percent or two of the population. Class warfare? That war is over and the top 1% won long ago.
So the whole package almost went down the tubes because liberal Democrats can’t stand the idea of rich people getting a measly 8%?
As artk noted 147/990 is not 8%.
Steve
OK. Let’s call it 15%. (Remember though, dead people don’t pay taxes. The tax on estates is really a tax on the heirs, many of whom have very middle class incomes.) But even at 15%, are we really giving them a “benefit” by allowing them to keep what they earn? Or, are we refraining from stealing from them what is theirs and not ours?
Joe makes an interesting point about the estate tax. Most of the tax relief probably benefits people who are not rich.
At the end of the day, there are little or no lower or even middle income people in the White House or the Senate, and congress is quickly getting to the same place.
I trust nothing these people propose, and in fact feel like anything they’re against, is probably something I should support (and vice versa).
They’ve exempted themselves from the health care they’re trying to jam down (or ram up…) our throats, they’ve exempted themselves from the insider trading rules they made for the rest of us (yes Barney Frank is within his legal rights to buy stock in a company he knows he’s about to give a billion dollars to), they get pensions for two years of service, private jets…
I make just under 200k. I support a wife, 3 kids, a disabled father, and a mother in law who lives with us. I’m not wealthy. And while I’m better off than a significant number of people, squeezing me more is only pushing me into the same cesspool so many americans are mired in. More of us in that pool doesn’t better the overall condition.
At the end of day, the less disposable income people have the less they’re going to buy. In the end, consumer spending is what’s driven our economy. We’re finding out right now what happens when that no longer works.
Stop getting sucked in to demonizing a particular group (unless of course it’s politicians). Put in term limits, hold our elected officials to the same laws and conditions they place on us, and say no to increasing gov’t payrolls. Those 3 things will bring a ton of reform.