Texas redistributes money from poor to rich

So much for Texas being a low tax state.

"A High Tax State for Low Income Taxpayers
Texas tax laws actually redistribute income away from ordinary families and towards the richest
Texans. A November 2009 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that
the poorest twenty percent of Texans paid, on average, 12.2 percent of their income in taxes,
while the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers paid an average of only 3 percent of their income
in state and local taxes. In fact, taxes paid by the poorest 20 percent of non-elderly Texans (those
with an average income of $11,200) are 5th highest in the nation. By this same measure, the taxes
paid by Texans in the second quintile , with average incomes of $24,500, were 17th highest in the
nation.
The primary reason for this mismatch is that the Texas tax system is extremely imbalanced in its
reliance on the “big three” taxes (income, sales, and property). Because Texas does not have a
personal income tax, the state’s tax system relies far too heavily on sales and property taxes.
“With poverty rates on the rise, the Texas tax system is actually pushing families further into
poverty.” said Meg Wiehe, ITEP’s State Tax Policy Director. “Reforming the unfair tax system to
achieve greater fairness should be a top priority for state lawmakers.”

http://www.itepnet.org/pdf/tx_povertyday_0910.pdf

Texas created 40% of all the new jobs created last year- they are doing somthing right because businesses are leaving other states and moving to Texas and they are looking for employees.

No income taxes - that's one reason Texas is creating jobs while others are losing jobs.

I'm not a Texan, but you gotta admit the economy is better there than just about anywhere else in the USA.

Don't you just love the way regressives attempt to frame the argument? I'm betting the rich folks in Texas pay a much smaller percentage of their income in food too. Shall we also charge for food in the grocery store based upon percentage of income levels now? How about energy. Shall we charge AlGore a higher rate per kWh because he's an evil rich dude who isn't paying his fair share for electricity? After all, those seniors shouldn't have to pay the same rate per unit of energy as some evil rich dude, right? Fairness demands that everyone pay the same percentage of their income for goods and services, right? A McDouble should cost AlGore $100 instead of $1 so that its cost to him approximates the cost to our seniors, right?

You need some new tricks Dog. The ones you know are boring.

So Texas rewards the people who are willing to get advanced degrees and risk their savings on new ventures that employ people.

Unlike the Brits who reward people who refuse to finish high school and/or spend all their money on booze and drugs with benefits, free medical care, free housing, and even free mobile phones. Which system creates more jobs?

And which system creates a permanent underclass? 20% of British households have no one who goes to work every morning. How soon before Obama, Pelosi, and Reid create that here?

Yes, the original arguement is hogwash.

The only reason Texas has a situation like this is because they have no state income tax. I bet you'll see the same thing for most the other states with no state income tax. So is the arguement that Texas should add a state income tax so things will appear "fairer"? And I assume the post is to jab at Rick Perry, even though he had nothing to do with it.

It's also misleading because they don't include the biggest taxes for most, which are federal taxes including income tax and payroll taxes. In the case of the federal income tax, the lowest earners get money back in the form of the earned income credit.

The fact is if you are poor, you will spend a higher percentage of your income for most anything, including many taxes and goods and services as mentioned above. The reason should be obvious; you don't have much income. Duh. And because they don't have much income, even if they end up paying a higher percentage of income for taxes, it will still be a smaller amount of money than what a rich person pays.

BearMtnHIB wrote: Texas created 40% of all the new jobs created last year- they are doing somthing right because businesses are leaving other states and moving to Texas and they are looking for employees.

No income taxes - that's one reason Texas is creating jobs while others are losing jobs.

I'm not a Texan, but you gotta admit the economy is better there than just about anywhere else in the USA.

The stimulus package paid for most of the net gain in jobs in Texas, which were primarily public sector jobs. The unemployment rate in Texas is higher than 25 other states, including California and Massachusetts (Texas has the highest rate of uninsured, compared to almost universal coverage in Massachusetts which has a lower unemployment rate than Texas, and a higher per capita). You might want to check your facts.

PrintSmith wrote: Don't you just love the way regressives attempt to frame the argument? I'm betting the rich folks in Texas pay a much smaller percentage of their income in food too. Shall we also charge for food in the grocery store based upon percentage of income levels now? How about energy. Shall we charge AlGore a higher rate per kWh because he's an evil rich dude who isn't paying his fair share for electricity? After all, those seniors shouldn't have to pay the same rate per unit of energy as some evil rich dude, right? Fairness demands that everyone pay the same percentage of their income for goods and services, right? A McDouble should cost AlGore $100 instead of $1 so that its cost to him approximates the cost to our seniors, right?

You need some new tricks Dog. The ones you know are boring.

kettle meet pot. so you are once again creating strawman arguments to deflect the topic. The post was that there are three primary sources of revenue for the government, income, property, and sales. Texas has merely shifted the taxes onto sales and property taxes in order to reduce income taxes, which results in the ordinary citizen paying a higher percentage of their income to the state in the form of sales and property taxes. If you compare apples to apples, rather than creating strawman arguments, look at the percentage of income by taxpayer. In Texas, the lower income residents pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the wealthy. No one, but you have premised that to mean that the wealthy should pay a higher price for goods than the lower income. But hey, keep on playing. You have only been able to use "regressives" once in this thread. Still waiting for coup d'etat, FDR, sovereign citizens, states rights, and the rest of your playbook.

Something the Dog Said wrote: kettle meet pot. so you are once again creating strawman arguments to deflect the topic. The post was that there are three primary sources of revenue for the government, income, property, and sales. Texas has merely shifted the taxes onto sales and property taxes in order to reduce income taxes, which results in the ordinary citizen paying a higher percentage of their income to the state in the form of sales and property taxes. If you compare apples to apples, rather than creating strawman arguments, look at the percentage of income by taxpayer. In Texas, the lower income residents pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the wealthy. No one, but you have premised that to mean that the wealthy should pay a higher price for goods than the lower income. But hey, keep on playing. You have only been able to use "regressives" once in this thread. Still waiting for coup d'etat, FDR, sovereign citizens, states rights, and the rest of your playbook.

I did compare apples to apples - almost literally - in my reference to percentage of income spent for food being higher for the poor than the rich. I took the same thing, food, and compared the percentage of income spent on it by lower income and higher income groups. Same for electricity. Same commodity, lower percentage of income spent on it by the rich than by the poor.

It exactly parallels the model you set up Dog. You took a single item, state taxes in Texas, and said that the rich were paying a smaller percentage of their income on it than poor people were. What you didn't provide, because it blows your argument that the rich aren't paying their "fair" share of taxes in Texas, is what percentage of total taxes collected by the State of Texas are paid by the rich. What is that percentage Dog?

PrintSmith wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: kettle meet pot. so you are once again creating strawman arguments to deflect the topic. The post was that there are three primary sources of revenue for the government, income, property, and sales. Texas has merely shifted the taxes onto sales and property taxes in order to reduce income taxes, which results in the ordinary citizen paying a higher percentage of their income to the state in the form of sales and property taxes. If you compare apples to apples, rather than creating strawman arguments, look at the percentage of income by taxpayer. In Texas, the lower income residents pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the wealthy. No one, but you have premised that to mean that the wealthy should pay a higher price for goods than the lower income. But hey, keep on playing. You have only been able to use "regressives" once in this thread. Still waiting for coup d'etat, FDR, sovereign citizens, states rights, and the rest of your playbook.

I did compare apples to apples - almost literally - in my reference to percentage of income spent for food being higher for the poor than the rich. I took the same thing, food, and compared the percentage of income spent on it by lower income and higher income groups. Same for electricity. Same commodity, lower percentage of income spent on it by the rich than by the poor.

It exactly parallels the model you set up Dog. You took a single item, state taxes in Texas, and said that the rich were paying a smaller percentage of their income on it than poor people were. What you didn't provide, because it blows your argument that the rich aren't paying their "fair" share of taxes in Texas, is what percentage of total taxes collected by the State of Texas are paid by the rich. What is that percentage Dog?

If you bothered to read the posts before going off on your rants, you would find in the OP the following:


"A November 2009 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that
the poorest twenty percent of Texans paid, on average, 12.2 percent of their income in taxes,
while the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers paid an average of only 3 percent of their income
in state and local taxes."

Percentage of their income Dog, not percentage of the taxes collected. How much tax revenue did Texas collect in 2009 and of that amount, what percentage of the total was paid by the top 1%? The top 1% paid 3% of their income in taxes, but what percentage of all taxes paid does that 3% represent? 40%? 50%? More?

When you look nationwide at federal income taxes, the top 1% of earners account for 24% of income and 40% of income taxes. They are paying a higher percentage of income taxes than their income represents. So I ask again, what percentage of total tax receipts does that 3% of income represent? Someone who earns $1 Million a year who pays 3% of their income in taxes ($30,000) pays nearly 5x more dollars in taxes than someone who is paying 12.2% of $50K in income does ($6100). Presumably the lowest 20% are not even making $50K a year so the discrepancy is even larger than the 491% one my example contains.

Why aren't you drawing attention to the fact that a rich person is paying 491% more in taxes than a middle class person is in Texas Dog?