The Poor Don’t Pay Enough Taxes

The Poor Don’t Pay Enough Taxes

The Poor Don’t Pay Enough Taxes

The Republican Tax plan has been released. They are trying to sell us, the great unwashed in flyover country, that this is tax reform. Lawrence H. Summers, who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, wrote about the tax plan in the Washington Post. From the article:

With the release of the Republican tax proposal, the most important tax debate in a generation is in full swing. Most reasonable experts agree that tax reform has the potential to spur investment and raise wages while also simplifying the system and increasing its fairness and legitimacy. The right question for debate is not the desirability of tax reform or even of business tax reform directed at spurring investment. It is the likely economic effect of particular proposals.

Unfortunately, the proposal on offer by House Republicans may well retard growth, reward the wealthy, add complexity to the code and cheat the future, even as it raises burdens on the middle class and the poor. There are three aspects of the proposal that I find almost inexplicable, except as an expression of the power of entrenched interests.

“…(R)aises burdens on the middle class and the poor?” By the stretch of anyone’s imagination and under any definition, I am in the upper middle class. I was not born here. My husband and I, jointly and severally, worked very, very hard. I don’t buy expensive stuff and I am having a yard sale next weekend. I am also in a very bad mood because my healthcare contract ends at the end of the month, and the Obamacare compliant plan I have been able to find costs three times what I paid monthly last year. Hubs is on Medicare now, which is a whole other stinky kettle of fish. I went to the doctor one time in 2017 to get blood work done so that I could get my thyroid medication refilled. What the heck. But, I digress. I called you here tonight to discuss taxing the poor.

The poor pay sales tax, Social Security and Medicare taxes, but about 43% pay no Federal Income Tax. That is a huge problem for me. The wealthy are overtaxed and the poor are not taxed enough.

There really are no poor in the United States of America. Not poor in the way the rest of the world knows poor. I don’t want to hear about food deserts. I don’t want to hear the “Fight for $15”. The poor have subsidized health care, housing, food, cell phones (remember Obamaphone lady?) and internet. And, many of the subsidies are for people three, four or five times over the Federal Poverty Level.

Who is paying for all of this? You are, you stupid sap. You work your little hooves to the quick so that you can subsidize the lifestyle of people you have never met. The poor have an iPhone 10 and you are carrying a flip phone. Epic. And, just for the halibut, you get to pay for the enormous bureaucracy that processes your hard earned pay. You lucky sap.

Now, I am not talking about kicking the poor to the curb or making them live in a cold-water flat with no heat. Many of us may need a helping hand occasionally, but when it’s a lifestyle, oh hale no.

Warren Buffett, rich idiot

And another thing. There are people like Warren Buffett, bless his heart, who say they don’t pay enough in taxes. Hey Buffett, here is a news flash: The United States Treasury takes checks. Make the check payable Department of the Treasury and send it to 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20220. Except the super rich don’t want to give their money to the government, either. They know what a clusterf**ck those bureaucracies are. The super-rich set up foundations so they can give out their money their own selves. You don’t get to do that, sap.

So, Paul Ryan (Lickspittle, WI) and Nancy Pelosi (Alzheimer’s, CA) can prattle on and on about tax reform and evil
Republicans and the burden on the poor, whatevs. All this talk about the system is “rigged”. Yes, it sure is. It is rigged against you and I. There will be no meaningful tax reform. They are just rearranging how they are going to screw us. Saps.

When the poor start paying into the system, then we might get meaningful tax reform.

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13 Comments
  • Steve S says:

    https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/resources/faq/faq_publicdebt.htm

    You can write a check payable to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and, in the memo section, notate that it’s a gift to reduce the debt held by the public. Mail your check to:

    Attn Dept G
    Bureau of the Fiscal Service
    P. O. Box 2188
    Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

    P.S.: I sent this to Warren Buffet when he was getting all righteous about his low tax rate. I never heard back if he did anything with it, though.

  • mac says:

    Maybe if the poor started paying enough taxes for it to hurt they might start recognizing that America’s profligate, out-of-control spending is not a good thing. As it stands now, they vote for every free thing they can since they know they won’t be paying for it.

  • geokstr says:

    Ms Williams: You forgot to mention Richard Nixon’s negative income tax, now known as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). It is a refundable credit, meaning you get a refund even if you paid no income tax; therefore on net many of the recipients do not pay sales or FICA taxes either. It is the third largest welfare program behind Medicaid and food stamps.

    In 2012, approx. 28 million households received EITC refunds of up to $6,000, based on taxable income up to $48,000 and no. of “qualifying children”.

    The worst consequences of the EITC are the perverse incentives it creates. Married households’ EITC benefits are much lower than singles, and they rise with the number of dependents, like most welfare. It discourages single mothers from marrying and rewards them for having more children out of wedlock, contributing to the destruction of the nuclear family and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

    There is massive fraud as well. The IRS does not bother to verify “qualifying children” nor if the filer is a citizen or a legal resident. The fraud is estimated by the IRS to be about 24% or $14 billion in 2013.

    And lastly, the EITC and other non-taxable welfare benefits, plus the rest of the nearly 50% who pay no income taxes have no incentive whatsoever to fight ever-increasing appropriation of income through taxation and will reliably vote for the party that promises them more “free stuff” – Democrats.

    • Doug Purdie says:

      Well said geokstr. Mitt Romney said some thing similar during the ’12 election year and was sneared at for it. He has a way of getting lambasted for his idea’s only to be vindicated years later.
      Those that pay no taxes are eager for more Gov’t programs that the rest of us will pay for. And it seems that those who pay no taxes are increasing in number. Project that forward and do some math. It ain’t pretty.

    • Toni Williams says:

      You are right. The EITC is the worst.

      TW

  • Dudley says:

    You’re right, there are no poor in this country. And those who are “poor” are so by choice. Better choices lead to better outcomes.

    A couple solutions:
    For every $1000.00 a person pays in Federal taxes they get 1 vote.

    Or

    Make the franchise contingent upon payment of Federal income tax. Anyone who pays no federal tax doesn’t get to vote in Federal elections.

    Either approach will offset the problem of the poor voting themselves other peoples money.

    The producers of the country deserve to say how the country should operate, not the consumers, layabouts, and n’er do wells.

    • GWB says:

      Make the franchise contingent upon payment of Federal income tax.

      No. It is entirely possible to be productive and still zero out your taxes. What should be the dividing line is whether you receive any sort of gift/charity from the gov’t. And you can’t vote for an equivalent time *after* receiving the benefit that you received the benefit. (This way, the left can’t pull their folks off the dole for a week before the elections so they can vote.)

  • GWB says:

    To a realist and/or a Christian, that one picture (of the protesters with the banner) is just … simultaneously mind-numbingly stupid and ROFL hilarious. As if.

    There really are no poor in the United States of America.

    That’s not entirely true. Even if we redefined the poverty level down to a realistic number, and eliminated the fraud, there would still be a small number of folks who are irredeemably poor. They range from the drug-addled homeless to the small family with no skills where the breadwinner has suddenly lost his minimally-paying job. But, no, the truly indigent in America are very few and far-between.

    I am not talking about kicking the poor to the curb

    One of the problems is the progressives insist that if you don’t want government taking care of them (IOW, charity from you, enforced at the point of a gun), then that’s absolutely what you’re doing. Despite the fact that limited gov’t conservatives are the most generous group with charity in America.

    But, it won’t change as long as there is not enough fire in the electorate to hold our national gov’t to the limitations of the Constitution. Which means that a smaller group will have to use a more intense fire to change things. That does not bode well.

  • Jay Dee says:

    Think again, Sparky. The poor pay a lot more taxes than they realise. Here’s how.

    Let’s imagine that Congress decides that Bill Ford, Jr. isn’t paying enough taxes and adds a surcharge of a cool million dollars to his his taxes. Mr Ford will quite justifiably complain that this is not fair but something else happens; the price of everything related to Ford Products increases a fraction of a penny. The price of new cars and trucks increases a dollar or three. The price of parts & dealer services increases. A couple hundred jobs move overseas. Everything carried on trucks increases a penny or two. On April 15th, Mr Ford writes the check for the million dollars.

    Hooray! Those evil rich people should pay their fair share. Right? The problem is where did Mr. Ford get the money? He got it from you and me. The tax was included in the goods and services provided by his company. Mr. Ford was just the tax collector.

    It may be called a progressive income tax but it ends up being a federal sales tax that everyone pays equally; a flat tax. My guess is that this hidden tax is in the neighborhood of 50%.

  • richard40 says:

    Good article except for one thing. While you are ragging on Ryan, you should realize Trump also guaranteed that the tax relief would all go to the middle and lower middle class, not the rich, so he accepted the leftie paradym as well, and Ryan is following Trumps directions..

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