wealthiest person in each state

delete

Quote: AZDuffman

That is just smart business. And you do not need to be rich. HELOCs let you do that. But thing is you pay the interest and the tax when you make that income. It is the old thing when you have a locked in mortgage. My rental is 3.25% for 30 years. Why on earth would I pay that back when I can do at least twice that in investments? Same thing with Bezos but on a larger scale.

Of course it's smart. I never said the rich were dumb and I never said they cheated. They play to win, so would I. Once again, the super rich do NOT pay the tax when the loan is retired. Unless you have wealth that exceeds a sum that will confidently grow exponentially even as you spend all you can for a lifetime, you are not playing the same game.

Quote: AZDuffman

Of course it does! It always does! Income taxes were only supposed to be for the top 1%, within a generation everyone was paying. I would prefer we amend the Constitution to prohibit income taxes and go all consumption and excise taxes. If we did then we would not have people who pay no tax screaming they want "free college" and "free health care" and all the other handouts.

On that we agree.

Quote: AZDuffman

Gotten their rates reduced dramatically?

In 1987 the top rate was 28%.
Obama raised it to 39.6.

Buffet probably remembers a top marginal rate of around 90% until the middle of the 1960s.

Even until the early 1980s that top rate sat at 70%.

Adjusted for inflation, about the same amount of taxable income now triggers only a 37% rate instead of 70%.

If you look at tax rates on that timeline, describing them as being "reduced drastically" verges on comic understatement.

Quote: Altstates93

Buffet probably remembers a top marginal rate of around 90% until the middle of the 1960s.

Even until the early 1980s that top rate sat at 70%.

this makes a good illustration of where the idea of taxing the wealthy goes. Of course 70-90% was absurd on the face of it, and the wealthy were instantly given all kinds of tax shelters so they wouldn't pay it. Needed investment was hurt badly too

So now supposedly with making the rich cough up their assets we're really going to go get em!! The same thing will happen again with the tax shelters because the politicians are for sale. In the meantime we're opening a Pandora's box

Quote: Altstates93

Buffet probably remembers a top marginal rate of around 90% until the middle of the 1960s..

As he was born in 1930 he would have been in his early 30's and would certainly remember them.

Quote: Pacomartin

As he was born in 1930 he would have been in his early 30's and would certainly remember them.

1988-1990 are misleading as there was a 33% "bubble" to make sure you paid 28% on all of you income.

I think the below quote is an accurate description, that’s not even reasonably debatable. The debate is only over if you think it’’s a great thing, bad thing, or something in between, and whether anything can or should be done about it.

Quote:

Longtime tax system critic David Cay Johnston hailed the ProPublica release as the “biggest and most important” tax story in his 55-year career. Hopefully, Johnston said, the article will help America “wake up and realize that our federal income tax, as currently designed, is a massive subsidy system for the super-rich.”

The way it works for the wealthy, what else could you label it but as a “subsidy”?

Quote: rxwine

I think the below quote is an accurate description, that’s not even reasonably debatable. The debate is only over if you think it’’s a great thing, bad thing, or something in between, and whether anything can or should be done about it.



The way it works for the wealthy, what else could you label it but as a “subsidy”?

The wealthy are the ones paying by far the lions share of taxes so if that is a subsidy it sure is a weird one.

Quote: AZDuffman

The wealthy are the ones paying by far the lions share of taxes so if that is a subsidy it sure is a weird one.

Hey, I’m not even going to argue anything should change. I’m just stating the overall result looks like a subsidy.

For any that might be interested in facts rather than rhetoric from biased sites on both sides. According to the Congressional Budget Office the top 1% of income earners paid 25.1% of total US federal taxes in 2020. The top 20% paid 68.9% of total federal taxes in 2020.