Analysis: 'Fair share' in taxes? Not by the number!

[Starbuck]

It is pretty straight forward; income taxes aren't the only taxes assessed at the federal level.

I really don't know why that is so difficult to understand.

OK. Got that. But the subject is income tax.

[Arroyo_Doble]

It also seems like the tax preparers drive this urgency to get your refund quickly even if you get less. There is a name for this which is no longer used in polite society, but my grandfather would have likened these people to merchants who sell bologna by the slice to a certain demographic.

I have a friend that is a think tank economist (very bright and very conservative). The last time he was in Ft Worth, we were having a general conversation and during it, he told me you can't get rich off poor people.

I laughed.

[Arroyo_Doble]

OK. Got that. But the subject is income tax.

And I think confining it to a specific tax when asking, "what's a "fair share" to give the federal government in taxes?" is disingenuous (at best).

[Lager]

It is pretty straight forward; income taxes aren't the only taxes assessed at the federal level.

I really don't know why that is so difficult to understand.

Perhaps we don't understand because those other federal taxes don't amount to enough to add pertinence to the discussion. Most of those other federal taxes are based on use, such as the federal tax on gasoline. So that doesn't lend itself to a debate about "fair" and "equitable" tax policy. It's the federal income tax where we see most evidence of the government using the tax code for political purposes.

[Novaheart]

I will confess to being totally stumped by AD's response

What the HECK are you talking about? You talk about nuances in choice of words to make your case against the evidence but then do not make a case for anything else that I can discern.

You don't really care "if the numbers they use are accurate"? Really?

Talk radio entertainers like Hannity tend to quote the highest possible amount of taxes paid, including all taxes (state, local, sales, SS, real estate, etc....), and Hannity in particular has claimed that he pays a truly incredible amount.

But when it comes to poor people and lower wage earners- these same jackasses only want to talk about federal taxes. They poo-poo the total bite taken from a person's income when you calculate all the taxes that lower income people pay and the fact that it's usually higher as a portion of income.

Here is an example. A woman who makes $10/hr and pays $1000 a year in property tax is paying about 5% of her income in tax. Between fuel, comunications, utilities, and sales tax she pays out another 10% of income. So 15% or more of her income is going to taxes, including the taxes which actually go to any services she is consuming on the local level. So to call her some kind of freeloader because she doesn't pay federal tax is bullshit.

Meanwhile, the last time I saw something on this, Exxon was getting $2.00 in tax dollar support for every gallon of gasoline they sell.

Meanwhile, the average Walmart has its wages supplemented to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars per store.

Meanwhile, McDonald's pay rate is supplemented by Section 8, SNAP, WIC, and childcare vouchers.

[Odysseus]

That wasn't bullshit; that was horseshit. Horseshit isn't manifestly false. It is subtle. Let's look at it real quick:

Ah, we've established your field of expertise: Excrement!

As they file their tax returns. Now, as everyone knows (well, most anyway ... you seem to be confused) income taxes aren't the only federal taxes assessed. You notice they do not say income taxes in that sentence, though. But they do use the word "returns." Now, you don't file a "return" for social security taxes or medicare taxes or any excise taxes so they slip that by without using the modifier "income." before they ask the question:

As everyone here but you seems to understand, we all know that income taxes aren't the only federal taxes assessed. When an article talks about tax returns, it is understood by the people who pay income taxes (still a bare majority, BTW) that they are discussin income taxes. The only person claiming otherwise is you.

Well, in a reasonable conversation, all taxes would be examined to try and come to a conclusion on that question. But this isn't meant to be a reasonable examination, is it?

Is that why whenever you're asked to define a fair share, you run and hide?

I'll ask again: What constitutes a fair share of income to be taken out in taxes? Give me a number.

The transition is complete. Now, the piece goes into the income tax burden only after making sure income taxes are the only ones being discussed.

Uh, everbody knows that income taxes are what is being discussed.

I don't really care if the numbers they use are accurate, they use weasel words like "close to," "almost," and "about," but that is a secondary issue to the real problem of the argument (propaganda, really).

So, because you don't like the argument, you don't care if it's factually accurate?

RALs. Refund Anticipation Loans. They get a cut buy basically giving a loan to the individual filing the return for less than the the refund. The refund itself goes to them.

Ah... Another way of feeding at the trough.

It is pretty straight forward; income taxes aren't the only taxes assessed at the federal level.

I really don't know why that is so difficult to understand.

It isn't. We keep saying that we're talking about income taxes. You're the only one trying to claim that we're obscuring something.

BTW, the tax preparers aren't getting rich off of poor people, they're getting rich off of the government, which is taking the money from the people who pay the taxes (yes, I mean income taxes, obviously just using the word "taxes" without the specific qualifier invalidates all other arguments in your myopic little world) and giving it to people who don't pay them. The people who file returns for refunds from income taxes that they never payed are getting a nice little piece of somebody else's pie, and the tax prep companies are skimming, just like the government skims, from the productive people.

[NJCardFan]

It would be interesting to see if there has been a demographic shift in the Earned Income Tax Credit or whatever they call the refund mechanism. It seems to me that the big tax preparer companies have been targeting the lowest wage earners lately. They also seem to be advertising a lot of "free" like free preparation and free filing. I can only assume they are making their money by taking a cut of the refund. Perhaps someone can enlighten me on that.

They do. They say they don't have a preparation fee but they do have filing fee which they take from the refund.

[fettpett]

10% across the board, everyone pays it, no refunds, no deduction, and Can't be raised. Get rid of Capital Gains and the death tax, cut spending dramatically and watch the economy boom like no other in the history of the world.

While I prefer the Fair Tax, a Flat tax would work just as well.

[Lager]

Nova, I agree with the argument that it's unjust to claim that the individual in your example isn't "paying any taxes." But all those taxes you describe are equitable and apply to all income levels the same. It's the epitome of fairness. It's the federal income tax that's at the forefront of the discussion because it's being used as a political tool of wealth redistribution rather than an honest, straightforward mechanism for funding the government.

[Arroyo_Doble]

Ah, we've established your field of expertise: Excrement!

The taxonomy of turds:

At the very bottom: dogshit. the lowest of the low-ragpickers, bag ladies, and people who hang out in dung heaps. when you treat somebody like dogshit, your contempt knows no bounds. Next we have chickenshit. Chickenshit allows for certain humanity. A chickenshit may be a disgusting coward, but at least he's not dogshit.

Bullshit comes after that-blatant and aggressive untruths. But at a certain level, of course, we admire our liars, don't we? Bullshitters get elected, chickenshits, never.

At the top of the hierarchy, at the summit of the heap: horseshit. Horseshit is false too, but it is not manifestly false. Horseshit is subtle. It's nuanced. It plays to win. Horseshit fools some of the people some of the time. Divine justice, for example, is horseshit, not bullshit. Indeed, we hold horseshit in such esteem that we decline to bestow the epithet on one another. A person can be a bullshitter but only a horse can be a horseshitter.

~ Paraphrased from Bible Stories For Adults by James Morrow