18 April 2010 They don’t pay their fare share of taxes

18 April 2010 They don’t pay their fare share of taxes - They're cheating honest conservatives!


http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_farmer/2010/04/still_steamed_about_taxes_now.html

“Still steamed about taxes? Now read this

By John Farmer April 18, 2010, 7:10AM

Now, about that 47 percent who pay no income tax. Who are they? Overwhelmingly, they’re individuals and families with little income or retirees and widows living on Social Security. (Try living in New Jersey on even $50,000 a year with a family of four.) They may pay no federal income tax, but they are liable for Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes and, of course, and for state and local taxes.

Bottom line: the real percentage that pays no taxes at all — income or payroll — isn’t 47 percent but just 13.4 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center. But 47 percent makes for a better story, doesn’t it? And for more outrage.”



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

“Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax

Recession, new tax credits have nearly half of US households paying no federal income tax

WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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…”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-04-16-editorial16_ST_N.htm

“Our view on financing government: When 47% don't pay income tax, it's not healthy for USA”

“Contrary to what you might have heard on talk radio or TV, it's not quite that simple. What's true is that the Tax Policy Center, a well-regarded think tank, calculated that 47% of Americans would owe no federal income taxes for 2009, up from the usual 38% who typically owe no income tax on April 15. Most still pay Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, sales taxes and property taxes (if they own any property).

So they're paying taxes, but the fact that 47% pay no federal income tax is nonetheless disturbing — not for what it says about the non-payers but for what it says about the nation's broken tax system and how hard it will be to fix it.

The people who pay no income tax aren't freeloaders or evaders; virtually all are simply doing what the law allows. That there are so many of them is the result of decades of deliberate, bipartisan tax policy.

That includes an appropriately progressive income tax that levies a heavier burden on better-off taxpayers, and little or none on those with the smallest incomes. It includes tax credits such as the ones that reward people for having children and help lift some people above the poverty line by rewarding them for working. And it includes President George W. Bush's tax cuts, which removed 5 million people from the tax rolls while giving big cuts to upper-income people as well.

More people owe no income tax this year because the recession has cost many people their jobs, and the tax cuts in the stimulus act — an idea conservatives preferred to spending programs — were potent enough to help push some people's tax liability to zero. Once the stimulus expires and the economy recovers, the number of non-payers should fall back toward the typical 38%.”

One of the forums I monitor and sometimes participate in was collectively outraged at the idea that there are private citizens who pay no income taxes. Be aware that this forum is publically to the right of Fox News in all matters. Comments from this forum ran the gamut of expected standards. “They’re lazy. They’re free-loaders They’re socialists who will destroy the country They’ve never worked in their lives and won’t have to as long as hard-working, God-fearing real Americans support them. They should be allowed to starve to death, die of disease or injury for failure to have more income. One commenter suggested complete disenfranchisement, removal of all safety nets, and execution by burning.

At the core, is their fear and anger that someone might be taking something from their pockets to allow someone else to live. They, for the most part, are in synch with the Tea Party mobs, find Palin to be worthy of office and adoration, and see no connection between the outsourcing and off shoring of American jobs and any decrease in the number of tax payers.

I’ve made no comment on that forum concerning this loss in taxpayers. My political position is far different from the common position and I’ve tired of the effort to introduce any variance into the forum on this matter or many others.

This forum is not unique. We’ve all seen recent television programs filled with red-faced white males screaming about free-loaders, demanding “Our country back, now.” We’ve heard one set of GOP sponsored lies after another splashed across television s in an attempt to make us think that people choose to earn so little as to have no tax liability. We’re supposed to believe that the bulk of these non-payers are lazy, non-white, non-conservative, intellectuals, non-Christians, or some combination of these markers.

But what is overlooked is the current reality of taxation.

There are millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, and thus, their income during the last decade. Odds are they didn’t earn enough to pay taxes last year... This 47% figure includes many older Americans living on Social Security &/or retirement benefits, a fixed income – for which they’ve already been taxed. This is often going to mean that those individuals fall below the current poverty line. If they choose to try to find work to supplement their Social Security benefits they run the risk of having those benefits decreased or cut. These retirees are either older, physically disabled, or perhaps both. There are many single mothers raising children who have limited incomes. Granted, many of these could have prevented having children – although the same people railing against this sub-population also rail against teaching or providing birth control to students or to people trying to avoid pregnancy. Many of the non-payers are the under-employed, working one or more part-time entry level jobs at minimum wage for large employers who provide no benefits to part-times and hire no full-time employees in order to maintain higher profits. Many of them are students, working part-time or full-time while simultaneously attending school to learn a trade or obtain a degree. There are families with children who take advantage of every tax credit and loophole they can find to reduce tax liabilities. If it means they pay no taxes, Congress wrote those loopholes and called for those credits, not the average tax-liable citizen.

Yes, there are people who take advantage of the system. There are people who find ways to avoid working. But they are not the majority of non-payers. They are the target population, chosen by the GOP and Tea Party propagandists to use to incite anger in those people who do have to pay income taxes. They are the scapegoats; the socialist, elitist, intellectual, lazy, pretenders, faking injuries, illness, and the outsourcing of their jobs in order to live from everyone else’s pockets. And just as Goebbels lies were ingested readily in Nazi Germany’ so are the Ad agencies television spots in today’s troubled economy.

This is yet another page in the GOP play book. Rather than admit that people who have no jobs, earn no money, and thus pay no taxes on income; they choose to fabricate a mythical “they” who are added to the pool of those held up as the cause of economic troubles in America. No GOP ads target the bankers and industrialists whose policies and practices took jobs offshore in order to increase profits, or who sold worthless investment paper to each other and to countless private investors, knowing that there was no real value to such paper once the investment houses had reaped their share.

I started work at age 14 in a medical laboratory. I have worked all my life until I was injured and rendered both un-employable and un-insurable. We watched our reserves melt away while insurance companies and the Social Security Administration delayed determinations for 3 and 4.5 years respectively, despite the initial finding by the neurosurgeon chosen by the insurance company, and by subsequent physician they sent me to, that I was disabled. We were lucky that we were able to outlast the planned delay strategy.

I would prefer not to be disabled, would prefer to be able to earn what I once earned. I’d like to have the insurance coverage I once had. But I’m well aware those options in a rear-end automobile collision. I’m grateful I have what income I do have. I paid FICA insurance payments all my working life. If I try to earn supplemental income, then those benefits will be decreased markedly. I can’t make enough at minimum wage to compensate for what I would lose. And there are many people out there in the same situation; they opt for the certainty, as little as it may be when weighed against food, medicine, and shelter, over the possibility in a part-time income source that will never pay the bills.

The non-payment issue will be brought up again and again to deflect inquiry away from corporations that pay little or no taxes, that shelter their money off-shore. It will surface when it is time to renew banking regulations, and when it is time to look at executive salaries that are in no way justified by their talent or skills. And it will be brought up to prevent any attempt at revising or rewriting the tax codes. There will never be a tax code that is fair to every citizen of this nation. There will never be full employment or full employment at a livable wage in this nation. Some people will always earn too little to have to pay taxes. If you are one of them, I understand your position and wish you good luck in avoiding further injury, illness, under, or unemployment. If you make enough to be liable, I wish you good luck as well. The distance between you and me can change in an instant. Mine did.

Yes, there are some people who work the system. I dislike them as much as you. But there are far more simply trying to squeeze out another month’s bills from the little that comes in. Don’t let the television and radio demagogues, ad agencies, and the career politicians lie to you and divide Americans into warring factions over this. Think about the people you know who work hard every day and take home a steadily shrinking paycheck. These are the folks who are being painted as tax cheats. They’re not. They’re your friends and neighbors, your mechanics, your day care workers, teacher’s aides, librarians, grocery baggers, and a host of others you see and interact with every day. They’d all like to make enough money next year to actually have at least a small tax liability. Just ask them.



http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/542.html