Month: April 2009

April 15, 2009 02:23 PM | Permalink |

A recent Gallup poll found that 61 percent of respondents felt that the federal income tax they will have to pay this year is “fair.” When asked about the specific amount of federal income taxes they pay, just over half felt they pay the right amount or too little. Forty-eight percent of respondents thought that the amount of federal income tax they pay is “about right.” That’s the highest percentage of people who responded that way since 1956. (Another three percent thought they the paid too little.)

Fewer than half of those polled, 46 percent, said they thought their federal income taxes are “too high.”1 It appears, however, that some of these respondents are basing their answers on the right-wing, anti-tax propaganda they’ve heard rather than their own income tax liability.

In particular, 39 percent of respondents with incomes below $30,000 said that they thought the federal income taxes they pay are “too high.” This is remarkable, because only 32 percent of taxpayers in this income group will pay any federal income tax at all on their 2008 income.

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April 15, 2009 02:04 PM | Permalink |

How Much More Would They Have Paid If the President’s Proposals Were in Effect?

Today the White House released Barack and Michelle Obama’s federal income tax return, revealing that they made over $2.7 million and paid almost $787,000 in federal income taxes in tax year 2008. The table below explains their income tax calculation and also illustrates what they would have paid if the President’s tax proposals were in effect in 2008. (President Obama’s tax proposals affecting high-income families would not take effect until 2011.)

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April 13, 2009 02:27 PM | Permalink |

Part 1: President’s Obama’s Budget, Taxes, and the Economy

1. Question: Does President Obama plan on raising our taxes? Answer: President Obama proposed tax cuts for more than 95 percent of Americans in his budget proposal. He would allow the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2.5 percent of taxpayers to expire as they are scheduled to at the end of 2010.1

This means that the very richest few will pay taxes at rates in place during the Clinton years while everyone gets to keep the tax cuts enacted by President Bush as well as additional tax cuts for low- and middle-income families enacted as part of the economic recovery legislation.

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April 13, 2009 02:25 PM | Permalink |

Many politicians, pundits and media outlets have recently claimed that the richest one percent of American taxpayers are providing a hugely disproportionate share of the tax revenue we need to fund public services. New data from Citizens for Tax Justice show that this simply is not true. CTJ estimates that the share of total taxes (federal state and local taxes) paid by taxpayers in each income group is quite similar to the share of total income received by each income group in 2008.

The total federal, state and local effective tax rate for the richest one percent of Americans (30.9 percent) is only slightly higher than the average effective tax rate for the remaining 99 percent of Americans (29.4 percent).

From the middle-income ranges upward, total effective tax rates are virtually flat across income groups.

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April 10, 2009 02:28 PM | Permalink |

As we approach April 15 th, one complaint we often hear is that Americans who work hard and become successful have to pay over a third of their income in federal income taxes. But a recent report from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) shows that this is not remotely true.1 The IRS data show that the federal income tax rates paid by the highest-income Americans have dropped substantially since 2000, largely due to cuts in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends pushed through by the Bush Administration. While income from work (salaries and wages) is subject to rates as high as 35 percent, income from investments (long-term capital gains and stock dividends) is taxed at only 15 percent.

The IRS report shows that in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available), the 400 richest income tax filers paid just 17.2 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI) in federal income taxes. That is down from 22.3 percent in 2000, and is less than half of the top statutory income tax rate of 35 percent. Almost 65 percent of the income reported by those 400 taxpayers consisted of capital gains and dividends subject to the preferential rates.

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April 2, 2009 01:54 PM | Permalink |

Yesterday, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives’ Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), released a budget plan1 which he argues is a more fiscally responsible alternative to the budget outline proposed by President Obama and the similar budget resolutions working their way through the House and Senate. His proposal is apparently an update on the plan that House GOP leaders introduced last week and is different in some key respects.

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April 1, 2009 11:51 AM | Permalink |

It would have been comical if the stakes were not so high. Allies of former President Bush, who cut taxes on the wealthy investor class in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006, argued that the only way to improve our economy was to… cut taxes for the wealthy investor class. Even before Barack Obama took the oath of office in front of two million Americans on that cold, clear day in January, his opponents in Congress insisted that the problem was not collapsing consumer demand but America’s insufficient devotion to cutting taxes for investors. Given that such tax cuts had been in place for years under Bush and failed to prevent the worst economic collapse in decades, the argument demonstrated a certain shamelessness, or perhaps an honest, blinding monomania on the part of the lawmakers who are part of the anti-tax movement.

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