HUCKABEE'S FAIRTAX PROPOSAL

parados wrote:

flaja wrote:

parados wrote:

I guess flaja forgot to mention that even though the taxes went up by about 25% for the upper 1%, their share of the total income almost doubled. They are paying more because they are making a much larger % of the total income. All that while their tax rates are being cut.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=1000566

So what? What do you have against people making money either through their labor or through their investments?

I notice that your report leaves out estate taxes and gift taxes. Try again.

My report uses the same source, CBO numbers, you used. Are you now saying you don't trust the CBO?

Your report didn't consider all of the taxes that the rich pay. The information I gave included all federal taxation.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, "Preliminary Estimates of Effective Tax Rates" (September 7, 1999)
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1545&from=4&sequence=0

Taxes are defined and distributed as follows: Federal taxes include individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and excise taxes.

But even by your own data you don't have a leg to stand on. By your data the top 20% income bracket saw their share of the federal tax burden increase by 18% (rounded) from 1979 to 2000. But at the same time their share of the nation's pretax income increased by only 20%. So the tax burden in proportion to income of the top 20% income bracket remained roughly the same.

The bottom 20% income bracket saw their share of the federal tax burden decrease by 48% while their share of national pre-tax income decreased only by 31%.

For the 2nd lowest 20% income bracket the tax burden fell by 33% while income share fell by only 23%.

For the 3rd lowest 20% income bracket the tax burden fell by 26% while their income share fell by only 15%

For the 4th lowest 20% income bracket the tax burden fell by 17% while their income share fell by only 11%.

The top 20% income bracket is the only group that actually saw their income share increase from 1979 to 2000, but this same group is also the only group to see its federal tax burden go up as well. So what's your beef?

flaja wrote:

parados wrote:

flaja wrote:

parados wrote:

I guess flaja forgot to mention that even though the taxes went up by about 25% for the upper 1%, their share of the total income almost doubled. They are paying more because they are making a much larger % of the total income. All that while their tax rates are being cut.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=1000566

So what? What do you have against people making money either through their labor or through their investments?

I notice that your report leaves out estate taxes and gift taxes. Try again.

My report uses the same source, CBO numbers, you used. Are you now saying you don't trust the CBO?

Your report didn't consider all of the taxes that the rich pay. The information I gave included all federal taxation.

No, it didn't. It included the exact same taxes I did from the CBO...

How could I not see it? The top 20% are taxed so much that their income is the ONLY group that is going up.

Nobody in the top 20% is going broke or even hurting a little bit from the taxation.

They continue to get more and more of the pie

True, my data did not include all taxes; just income taxes. My source did not mention anything about not counting the estate or gift tax, which I would assume are counted an part of the federal income tax

since they would both be unconstitutional without the income tax amendment.

Your source expressly said that the data do not include the estate tax or the gift tax.

But either way your data must leave something out. According to what you posted, in 1979 the top 20% income bracket paid 56.4% of the taxes paid. But according to my data this income bracket paid 67% of the taxes paid. Your data must not give the whole picture. If your data do not include all income taxes, why is your data for 1979 not the same as mine?

parados wrote:

Quote:

They continue to get more and more of the pie

And they also pay more and more of the taxes.

Really? Why would you think they would be unconstitutional without the 16th amendment? An estate tax was first imposed in 1797. Not only did the founders enact the first estate tax, the courts found the estate tax to be constitutional before the 16th amendment was ever passed.

Perhaps you need to read what your data says..
Preliminary Estimates of Effective Tax Rates"

flaja wrote:

parados wrote:

Quote:

They continue to get more and more of the pie

And they also pay more and more of the taxes.

While getting more and more of the pie.

If they are the ONLY quintile that is increasing in % of income then they are the ONLY quintile that is NOT being penalized in any way.

flaja wrote:

Advocate wrote:

To qualify for SS and, I think, disability, you need only 40 quarters (10 years) of creditable service. So the waitress working 15 years would more than qualify for something.

Work 10 years and have a guaranteed living for 40+?

The math doesn't compute and this is why Social Security is going broke.

Contrary to liberal doctrine, we cannot tax and spend our way to universal prosperity- impoverished socialism yes, prosperity no.

The payment would be pretty small, based on number of quarters and earnings. So relax, f, we are not getting ripped.

And they also pay more and more of the taxes. Now what percentage of the total federal tax collection would you have this top 20% income bracket pay? What amount is justifiable in your eyes? And what percentage of the total federal tax collection do you think your income bracket should pay?

parados wrote:

Really? Why would you think they would be unconstitutional without the 16th amendment? An estate tax was first imposed in 1797. Not only did the founders enact the first estate tax, the courts found the estate tax to be constitutional before the 16th amendment was ever passed.

Care to document this claim? The Wikipedia article on the federal estate tax makes no mention of it.

However,
http://www.brandeis.edu/gsa/gradjournal/2003/pdf/silberstein.pdf

The 1797 tax was not an estate tax as we now know it. The 1797 tax was a tax on the administrative process whereby property was legally transferred to heirs upon inheritance. The amount paid in taxes was not determined by the value of the property that was inherited. Basing the amount of the tax on the value of the property without appropriation among the states would be the equivalent of an income tax and would have been unconstitutional before the 16th Amendment. Your citation from brandeis talks about Knowlton v Moore and how the 1898 estate tax was found to be constitutional. Did you not read before you cited it?

BTW: This 1797 tax was meant to raise revenue to pay for the U.S. Navy. Would you consent to an estate tax if it was only used to pay for the military?

Quote:

Perhaps you need to read what your data says..
Preliminary Estimates of Effective Tax Rates"

Preliminary data 20 years after it was gathered? Even the government would be hard pressed to miscalculate something by almost 19%. Now why does your data say 56.4% while my data, from the same source, say 67%?

The data in the tables are preliminary because CBO is still making adjustments to its databases and methodology. In particular, CBO is reviewing the measure of income it uses to classify families. As indicated in the table footnotes, families are classified by adjusted family income--which equals total cash income, the employer share of Social Security and federal unemployment insurance payroll taxes, and the corporate income tax--adjusted for differences in family size by the equivalence scale implicit in the official federal poverty thresholds. The income measure excludes all income received in kind. Any changes to CBO's measure of income, its basis for ranking families, or its calculation of effective tax rates would lead to values different from those shown in the tables. Anyone citing these numbers should therefore do so with caution. The preliminary tables are provided only to ensure the availability of comparable historical values in lieu of the inconsistent values published over the past 10 years.

My friend worked maybe 10 years at minimum wage some 50 years ago. She gets about $900 a month in SSI disability. My mother worked for 30 years since 1967 as a bookkeeper for most of that time and she gets only about $1500 a month in SSI disability. How is this fair? My mother worked longer than my friend did and my mother has paid more in taxes than my friend has. So why does my mother get so little in return?

(You could give Joe is yes/no answer now.)