Tax the super rich

It is now a few days past this year’s Tax Deadline which means
everyone just sent a check to the Internal Revenue Service and to
Sacramento.
Right? Wrong.
Almost half (45 percent) of U.S. households will pay no federal
income tax this year, according to the Tax Policy Center, a
government watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C.
These households enjoy a bushel of tax breaks and credits
available to many of us, including deductions for home mortgage
interest, child tax credits, charitable donations and income
deductions on other state, local and sales taxes paid. But they
also benefit from many other very specialized tax breaks and
shelters, too.
With the bulk of tax breaks going to the very richest people in
the country, the people who pay the highest percentage of their
income on taxes are middle class families. They pay as much as 33
percent of their adjusted income to Uncle Sam while a billionaire
like Warren Buffet pays only 18 percent of his reported income in
taxes.
“Frankly,” he testified at Congress last week, “an economy where
my receptionist pays a lot higher tax rate than I do does not
strike me as a just economy.”
These days there’s lots of confusing debate going on about taxes
and who should pay how much. President Obama wants to raise taxes
on the super rich, while Republicans argue this would hurt the
economy because the super rich are the people that are “job
creators.”
Meanwhile, we look around our hometowns and watch our schools
lose millions in tax support and other government services and jobs
get cut. Then we’re told more sacrifice from us will still be
needed. Where are all the job creators around here?
In a nation where 10 percent of the population now “owns” 90
percent of the wealth, yet in many cases pay no taxes, it is more
than obvious that all is not fair.
Who are the rich and super-rich, anyhow?
President Obama says it is anyone who makes over $250,000 a
year. That puts you in the top three per cent of American
households, and is more than four times the national median income.
These are the people for whom Congress just extended the Bush Era
tax cuts, at a tax loss of $18 billion a year. Our schools could
use some of that money right now, don’t you think?
Working hard all year and struggling with a sluggish economy is
not fun. We all dread the April 15 tax deadline as it approaches
each year. But hearing how the very rich and super-rich are being
shielded by Congress from paying a more fair share of taxes is
maddening.
“Over the last three decades, the richest one percent’s share of
national income has doubled. The share going to the richest
one-tenth of one percent has tripled,” said Robert Reich, a former
U.S. secretary of labor and professor at U.C. Berkeley. Over the
same time period, middle class income has increased by less than
one percent in real dollars.
Anyone making $1 million a year now pays the same tax rate as
someone making $100 million, or $1 billion.
We need some new tax brackets for the super-rich who don’t even
know where all their money is in the first place.
Some of these billionaires, like Warren Buffet, actually want to
pay higher taxes. So, why don’t we let them?
“The richest families in our country pay a lower tax rate than
the people who take care of their children, or who teach in their
schools, or who would put out a fire if their house were to start
to burn,” said Gene Sperling, of the Center for American
Progress.
This tax problem is simple, right? Wrong.
— Rollie Atkinson