Who Exactly Pays Federal Income Taxes is a Direct Reflection of a Frightening Social and Economic Decline
At first glance, we love it when the wealthiest and richest Americans pay the most income taxes. But our corporate media does not elaborate on why the lower 50% of American workers pay very little, if any, federal income taxes. The IRS reports the top 50% of employees pay almost all of the federal income taxes while the vast majority of the bottom 50% pay no federal income taxes.
Excerpt from the Tax Foundation. Link to the full report is below: In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (68 million filers) paid 96.7 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3.3 percent.
Excerpt from Randi Weingarder, President of American Federation of Teachers: The “point-zero-one-percent” (0.01)—16,000 families—own 12 percent of the wealth in America.
See the remainder of her talk at: http://www.aft.org/press/speeches/americas-retirement-crisis#sthash.Nx9Y3yAQ.dpuf
IMO, everybody earning a taxable income should pay income taxes. However, here is the caveat: People must make a living wage to afford it. A struggling family of four with both parents working for $9.00 hour earn $37,440 annually, for example. They cannot afford it, and the IRS might lose money by devoting time to collecting a few hundred dollars from low-income workers.
This economic and social condition is a reflection of many variables that have been already discussed ad nausea in the corporate media: IMO, the number one dynamic is that the United State’s middle-class is slowly, but steadily, decreasing. We all know that those middle-class, good paying manufacturing jobs, have been shipped overseas. Those remaining jobs are being replaced by automation and technology. Gainful employment has been replaced by permanent minimum wage service jobs that people are stuck in forever.
I favor a flat tax to simplify the tax code. But that is not going to happen. There is too much corruption and power to keep the tax code complicated, and loaded with deduction loopholes. Flat taxes have been suggested for decades. But under the current complex code, many of the richest corporations in the world can legally avoid paying income taxes. Think about this: if all the money spent on hiring the most expensive tax attorneys ever produced by our nation’s elite Evy League universities would simply pay the taxes owed instead, I wonder how much money could be reallocated paying off our national debt.
Just a thought, because so much talent and energy are deployed to avoid taxes instead of creating wealth and opportunities. It has been reported that the hoards of highly paid the lobbyists are lecturing every member of Congress not to mess with the tax code, as they like it exactly where it’s right now. Or face reelection challenges. This is our political system unfortunately.
http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/FF445.pdf
How can we increase good paying jobs so we can reverse the most challenging economic and social decline of our time?
Steve