You cannot compare the effects of the Bush tax cuts in 2001 with the conditions existing prior to the cuts going back to 1986, because in 1986 you had a different tax structure than in 2000.
Fair enough. It was an off-the-cuff find demonstrating how the tax burden has continued to grow more progressive despite tax cuts and despite the insistence of people like you that as the rich have gotten richer they have paid less in taxes.
No, because it refers to only a portion of the overall taxes, and a declining portion at that.
I was addressing your initial point. If I misunderstood it, then my bad.
Not at all, my first post on the subject addressed the fact that you can't fairly look at the tax burden by only looking at income taxes. See post # 50.
Saying it doesn't make it so. The tax issue being debated in this election is about income taxes.
Then you should have said that. The post you responded to, #54, discussed the effective tax rate the richest pay falling from 33% to 31%. If you meant to talk about proportion paid, you should have indicated that. Instead, you said:
Then I misunderstood your point. My bad.
Your statement is wrong. The income tax burden on the rich did nto increase under the Bush tax cuts. If you meant the the proportion of income taxes paid by the rich increased, that is not what you said. Your inability to communicate effectively is your problem, not mine.
Income tax burden is the same thing as proportion of income. Both represent the share paid by each group. You're parsing words here.
In either sense, as your own data reveals, the total tax burden and the effective tax rate increased for the rich following Bush's tax cuts.
Year - total revenues - income tax rev.
2000 2025.2 1004.5
2005 2153.9 927.2
Source: CBO.gov
Thank you for the data.
That is false, I never denied that the richest paid proportionately more of the income tax.
Very well, then I misunderstood your point. My mistake.
So how could it have increased for the rich as you claimed.
I mis-typed. I meant to say that the effective tax rate tax rate had been reduced for everyone.
The tax burden decreased for everyone except for the rich.
Your data, as I already noted, demonstrates this.
Please refrain from this kind of name calling if you wish to continue debating with me. Thanks.
My apologies for my little tantrum.
Part of what I am arguing is that the richest make proporitionally more income. Because they make proportionally more income, they will pay more taxes, even at the same effective tax rate. The fact that the richest pay proporationately more taxes does necessarily mean it is more of a burden on them if they are making more income.
What a convoluted argument. You're totally twisting how the word "burden" is used. Typically, when discussing tax payments the word "burden" is used to illustrate the share or proportion of something paid by a group. You're using it to reflect some degree of difficulty, of which you don't even try to quantify.
It's self-evident that it's easier for the rich to pay more taxes, they earn more jack.
I'm still not sure what you're trying to argue.
And if fact, the first table shows that their tax burden has decreased under Bush.
Of course it does. No one argues that taxes were not cut for the rich.
The bigger picture, though, is that under Bush all groups saw their effective federal tax rate decrease (as I noted before). The rich saw the smallest decrease. This fact kinda undercuts any point you want to make about the reduction of that tax rate for the rich. All groups saw their effective federal rate reduced with the lower groups seeing by far the biggest reductions.
The lowest class saw there tax rate drop 2.3 points from 6.4% to 4.3% and the richest saw their effective rate drom 1.8 points form 33% to 31.2%. That doesn't seem like a "far greater reduction" in total rate to me.
Oh boy, here we go, again.
You're only looking at the nominal change in the rate. And even looking at just that, 2.3 versus 1.8, that's still a 22% difference. In other words, looking only at the recuction in "points" the lowest class still saw a 22% greater reduction than the rich.
Here's the math:
2.3 minus 1.8 = 0.5
0.5 divided by 2.3 = .217 or 22%
In other words, the 0.5 difference represents a 22% greater reduction for the lowest quintile.
meanwhile, when you look at the actual change in rates paid by each group...we see the lowest quintile saw a 30+% reduction in their effective tax rate under Bush while the "rich" saw a 9% reduction.
No matter how you look at it, the lowest quintile saw a far greater reduction in effective tax rate.
Plus, the incomes of the lowest groups fell on average. The lowest group fell from $16,600 to $15,900, and with lower incomes you will see lower tax liability.
You're moving the goalposts.
You have been talking about effective tax rates, not tax laibility.
Finally, for income taxes, the effective rate for the richest group fell from 24.2% to 19.4%. There share of corporate taxes increased from 6.7% to 9.9%.
And what?
Here we see that the effective rate for individual income taxes fell for all of the groups.
Meanwhile, for the corporate income tax, yeah, the rich pay more while the the lowest, second, and middle quintiles pay less.
Again, what's your point here? That the rich saw a decrease? Of course they did as tax rates fell for everyone, including those with no liability at all.
It seems that you're upset that the rich saw any reduction whatsoever. Is that your point?
The main reason why the overall tax effective tax rates of the richest fell just two points is because corporate tax revenues grew 35% from 2000 to 2005. The CBO allocates these taxes thusly: "Corporate income taxes
are distributed to households according to their share of capital income." Thus, 58.7% of corporate taxes are allocated to the wealthiest 1%.
You're way off track here. What is this supposed to mean?
Look, no matter how you cut it, under Bush all groups saw their tax rates decrease. The lower quintiles saw the greatest redcutions.
No matter how you cut it, under Bush all groups except the highest quintile, saw their tax burden reduced, i.e., their share of total tax liabilities decreased while the highest quintile saw their share of total tax liabilities increase.
Conclusion: no matter how you cut it, under Bush's plan the lowest quintile fared better than the rich.
If you are going to accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, please show us where I ever said the rich benefitted more.
That's the clear implication of all of your points.
If you would actually present what your real point is it'd be easier to figure out what you're arguing.
Certainly on a dollar level the rich benefitted much more.
Well, of course, they did. To use your own words, "Because they make proportionally more income, they will pay more taxes..."
So they will save more when taxes cut.
What's your problem with that?
