Why are you not drawing attention to the fact that a poor person is paying 12% of their income compared to a rich person only paying 3%? I realize this is your typical bait and switch to hide that you prefer being a tool for the rich and corporate elite, but even your professed savior saw the fallacy in your argument.
"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you can be batman. Then always be batman." Unknown
Something the Dog Said wrote: Why are you not drawing attention to the fact that a poor person is paying 12% of their income compared to a rich person only paying 3%? I realize this is your typical bait and switch to hide that you prefer being a tool for the rich and corporate elite, but even your professed savior saw the fallacy in your argument.
Go back to Pineinthegrass' statement - earned income credit
so the poor pay 12% of their income in TAXES, and rich only pay 3% in taxes.
I'd like to see the numbers of how that works out, because you'd expect the rich to have more property, or at least more property in the higher end areas, which means more property tax.
Or is it possible that it's because the poor have no choice but to shop local - thus more of their money into sales tax - and the rich can shop other places? I do rememebr my grandpa saying something once about the rich people going into NM or other places to buy their cars. But he said that a long time ago, context is long gone, and well, can't exactly ask him.
Oh, and Something The Dog Said's avatar wins the creepy avatar contest, IMO.
If you are going to make arguements based on the percentage of a person's income, then let's look at the flip side of just what those taxes pay for and who benefits the most as a percentage of income.
One example would be property tax which pays for a good part of public education. Both low and high income people get the same benefit, which averages nationally around $8500 a year per student. The high income person would generally pay higher property taxes, but that's not my main point. If you look at it as a percentage of income as the OP does, a low income person making say $12K would get a benefit of 70% of his income on just education alone (for one child), while a high income person making $100K only gets a benefit of 9% of his income. Highly unfair using this arguement!
And low income people get benefits from taxes paid that most other people cannot get at all; things like Medicaid, food stamps, school lunch, welfare, earned income credit, etc. Mid and high income people get 0% of their income for these tax paid benefits while low income can get a good percentage of their income back in benefits.
My point is that the study mentioned in the OP should factor in the benefits received for the taxes paid if they really want to make a fair argument. Also, why pick on Texas? You should see something similar in other states with no income tax. As I mentioned, I think this is all ment as an attack on Rick Perry who had nothing to do with it anyway.
And speaking of the earned income credit, I'm pretty sure they did not factor that in when they looked at total taxes paid (federal and state) in another study I saw them do.
Warren Buffet said that the rich need to bear a higher burden for the taxation of America. However, according to actual IRS data, the richest 1% of Americans already pay more than 95% of all the rest of America. The top 3% already pay more than the bottom 97% of Americans.
