patrick.net

So I dug through my tax filings and pulled my last filing in which I had massive deductions and credits: one child, child care, spouses tuition, interest on mortgage, property taxes, health insurance, and 401K contributions. Turbo tax figured my tax rate to be 3.9%! When I saw that at the time I thought, "who is paying for the ME wars." Then I remembered, "oh yeah, the federal credit card."

You see, I'm not poor. Heck, I make well above median household income but not near 6 figures. Yet I paid very little in federal taxes. So if 47% pay nothing how many of us pay next to nothing. Are all the deductions and credits good for our country?

I think that many people vote along the party lines out of fear. They believe the rhetoric of either party and vote accordingly. According to the articles, last year 49% didn't pay any taxes and the year before it was 38% - yet we all know that this will be twisted into another reason to hate President Obama.

It's all about spin.

A staunchly republican nurse friend of mine was telling me that manywomen who want to get pregnant quit their jobs, then get pregnant and let Medicaid pay for it. It's wrong, she said - and she hates having to pay for them. However, her husband is going to school via grants & low-cost loans and she doesn't see this as welfare. She stated that she would never go on welfare no matter what - yet has no health insurance and last year a local hospital wrote off much of a bill for a hospital stay...

But do I have a problem with people not paying income tax? Hell no, I only wish I were one of them. I pay gas taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, taxes for my auto registration... If legal loopholes exist, we should use them. That's what they're for.

I understand your point but now that I am a renter I feel like I am getting screwed because I don't have those big, juicy deductions. Granted those deductions evaporate over time but still.

Since I live in a small town in the midst of nowhere, my taxes aren't that great and they don't give me much of a deduction. By the time all is said & done, the standard deduction/exemption is within a few hundred dollars of what I'm getting.

Granted, I don't pay a shitload of dollars in rent/house payment either. It astounds me when I hear the amounts that people are paying on the west coast. And in Jersey - OMG!

And the stupid thing is these low taxes are ending up in higher rents and mortgage payments.

It was no accident that the housing bubble got rolling right when the 2001-2003 tax cuts kicked in.

Give everyone $200 or more a month in after tax income, it's going to go towards bidding up the dominant expense in everyone's life: housing.

ATCOR -- "All taxes come of out rents". When I first came across the argument, a very big light bulb went on. Wish I had heard about it prior to the tax cut bills getting passed in 2001, woulda waltzed into Countrywide and said 'gimme any loan you got'.

Not that the tax cuts were the primary pusher of the bubble -- interest rates falling from 7% to 5% also helped, plus of course all the negative-am, IO, qualifying people on the teaser rate or on stated income/assets also contributed mightily.

It's all part of our growing entitlement society. People expect someone else to pay for their retirement (social security), health care, education, and provide a general safety net.

This isn't new. Same sort of situation in Japan and W. Europe. We'll gradually become more like them, which means lower standards of living in general, since eventually you run out of other peoples money.

Ptipking222 says

since eventually you run out of other peoples money.

10% of the populations owns ~90% of the asset wealth in the US. Something's wrong with your ideology, check it out.

Troy says

Ptipking222 says

since eventually you run out of other peoples money.

10% of the populations owns ~90% of the asset wealth in the US. Something’s wrong with your ideology, check it out.

The top percentage of the population has been increasing it's share of the countries wealth since the Reagan tax cuts created the all tax cuts all the time mantra of the current republican party. So when does the wealth actually trickle down? I would think 30 years would have been sufficient. Maybe I'm just too impatient.

In Texas there is a saying "the man is pissing on my boots and telling me it's raining". Any time the elite running the country say they are doing something that will benefit me I check the color of the puddle. It's always yellow.

I think that many people vote along the party lines out of fear. They believe the rhetoric of either party and vote accordingly. According to the articles, last year 49% didn’t pay any taxes and the year before it was 38% - yet we all know that this will be twisted into another reason to hate President Obama.

Actually it was President Bush who took the biggest leap in offering tax credits for lower and middle income families in one of his many efforts at "compassionate" conservatism.

The income tax credits have gone way too far imo. I think everyone should pay something in income taxes. Otherwise it cultivates an entitlement mentality.