2.26.2009

Obama's new math

The 2% Illusion - Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough

Excerpt:

Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

...

A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.


Comment: There's an opportunity for genuine fiscal conservatives (whether they are "blue dog" Democrats or Republicans) to define themselves and appeal to common-sense voters that "change that can be believed" will be a ballot choice in 2010 and 2012!

1 comment:

  1. Speaking of the Federal government taxing us to death, what's with this bill in Minnesota?

    https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H0997.0.html&session=ls86

    Do you think states are starting to wake up and realize that if things keep up the way the are that the economy is in danger of being completely destroyed?

    ReplyDelete

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