For those making over $250,000. Just for fun I did the numbers and the difference for someone at exactly $250,000 would be $6,874.50 more in 2013. Looked at another way, they would pay $73,902.50 instead of $67,028 in taxes. Yet another way, their effective overall rate will increase from 26.8% to 29.6%.
Do I have a point? Not really, I just wanted to get the numbers out there to derail the inevitable breast-tearing about the economy sinking or whatever. These numbers are based on the rates found here:
and the language Obama is using, which seems to say that if you are past that mark all of the old rates will apply to you, not just the rates over $250,000.
Good for him. I make less than half of the $250k limit and I’d happily let my cut expire, if it affected everyone in my bracket. Tax cuts for people making significant multiples of the poverty line are silly, in my book, as long as we’re running a deficit.
And let’s not get caught up in the “oh, but the poor small business owners” shenanigans. It would be trivial (compared to the rest of the tax code) to write something in to cover that scenario. Or better yet, make those people file taxes as actual businesses instead of personal tax returns.
If the cutoff is really 250,000 in the universe where Obama has a Democratic controlled Congress to pass this stuff, wouldn’t the net differences in taxes be… 0?
After all, this is a marginal rate, and should only apply to income starting at 250,000.01.
Not the way I’m reading it but I might be wrong. What I’ve seen is that cuts will be kept for people, not income, under $250,000. That may just be the sloppy media but it says to me that all of the rates would change for those over.
It ticks me off that the Republicans were up in arms about extending the payroll tax cut. They’re happy to let taxes rise on anyone who isn’t wealthy. But let taxes rise on those who can most afford it and they go on the warpath.
But of course. The non-wealthy don’t really matter, except for their votes, and you get those by demonizing minorities of various kinds (ethnic, sexual).
Until the economy gets back to robust growth, and in the absence of inflation BTW, the deficit means squat and we shouldn’t worry about it.*
*but, if one truly thinks the bond vigilantes are coming for us, then by all means raise taxes on those people who can comfortably pay them.
It’s not so much the accuracy as the relevancy. Dollar amounts don’t mean anything without scaling them to percentages of cost/savings, it’s like calling someone advantaged because they saved ten thousand dollars on the price of their Ferrari when you only saved two thousand on your Kia Rio. Shit be relative, yo.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? We’re talking about relative weight of taxes, not how many boxes of cereal you can buy. If you frame it in dollars then you have people saying that the wealthy are being unfairly taxed; if you frame it in percentages it brings perspective into the discussion.
If we are talking about relative weight of taxes, then we should also mention caps on whole bunch of things, like SS. Taxes disproportionally affect bottom 20%. As much as GOP likes to attack “freeloaders”, paying 20% of 20K/year is much bigger burden than paying 20% of 200K/year.
I’m pretty liberal on this stuff, but that isn’t really disproportional. It’s exactly proportional, because the take is capped and the give is capped, the wealthy don’t get more SS benefits than the poor past a certain amount. Per lifestyle it’s argued that the rich SS contribution and benefit is insignificant, which is accurate. SS is a forced retirement plan for everyone, plus a safety net for those who can’t or won’t save for old age. The only disproportion is that the eventual payout means much less to the rich.
