[Quote=Factcheck.org]
There are a number of corporate tax implications in Obama’s plan, but here are the major parts affecting individual taxpayers:
Allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for couples making over $250,000. Specifically, that would increase the top tax rate from 35 to 39.6 percent. That’s expected to generate $442 billion over 10 years. (page 219)
Reduce the value of itemized deductions and other tax preferences to 28 percent for families with incomes over $250,000. That is expected to generate $584 billion over 10 years. (page 220)
Increase capital gains tax rates from 15 percent to 20 percent, raising $36 billion over 10 years.
Increase taxes on dividends from 15 percent to 39.6 percent. That’s expected to raise $206 billion over 10 years.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that’s the Obama plan - but it differs from the Senate bill in a number of ways (the itemized deduction value reduction, for example, doesn’t appear to be in the Senate bill). It’s a bit unclear whether the Senate bill sets dividend income at the 20% rate or back to the pre-2003 rates (I think it’s likely the latter, as you say).
Either way, I would expect the dividend rate to be an area of negotiation. It’s certainly not something I’m wedded to, appreciating the arguments on both sides.
No one claims that restoring earlier taxes on the rich will solve all problems in the world. It is your ilk that insists on the idiotic claim – that there is no reason to restore taxes on the rich unless that will solve all problems.
For the umpteenth time, because of the quote. It’s Buffett’s quote. Had a pauper achieved fame with such a comment, it would be that pauper’s quote. Your obstinance in misrepresenting me(*) may lead me to start ignoring (and stop correcting) your posts – that may come as welcome relief to you.
(* - especially since the identification is irrelevant. It’s pathetic the way you guys get hung up on personal specifics. In another thread, I mentioned Krugman’s opinion on something and made the mistake of mentioning his Nobel Prize. One of your right-wing friends – who had absolutely zero to contribute to the economics discussion – made eleven posts just to complain that I’d mentioned the Nobel Prize! :smack: )
This newspaper article claims Bufett wrote that. Can you source your much higher figure?
The source, BTW, is a right-wing article in a right-wing newspaper, which makes the usual right-wing error of misreading Buffett’s actual comment:
Buffett specifically included “payroll taxes paid by employer on her behalf.” This whole topic is a digression within a digression But … the fashion in which right-wingers continually misrepresent Buffett’s remark strikes me as a good example of right-wing ignorance, hypocrisy and [checks forum] sub-genius cognition.
This discussion is making little progress. I mention a comment about tax rates, which, irrelevantly, happened to have been made a rich man; another Doper seizes on the irrelevant identity of the quotee like a dog that won’t let go. I plead guilty to objecting to his hijack, and thus further hijacking the thread, – but I do get very very annoyed when my comments are deliberately misconstrued. In this case I was turned into a “strawman” for views I never remotely suggested.
Here’s a Wikipedia article which offers a thorough and relatively balanced look at the U.S. Federal deficit, and orders of magnitude more intelligence than has been exhibited in this thread.
My “modest proposal” is that further comments focus on that article – summarizing its wisdom, or calling attention to any errors it might have.
Look, I’ll continue this as long as you want and will answer any post as specific as anyone wants, but I need one answer first. Where exactly have I misrepresented anything you have said?
Further, if you think it is irrelevant that the person is Warren Buffett, who just happens to be first or second richest person in America then I don’t know what to tell you. It is absolutely relevant, which is why it is even a talking point and why you brought it up. Does it honestly have anywhere close to the same impact if you say that Joe Smith has a lower effective tax than Fred Smith even though Joe makes more?
Now, I have no idea how you possibly think I am misrepresenting you. Perhaps you think I am missing an overall larger point. Possibly that the overall tax code is not progressive or progressive enough. My point that I have stated a few times now is that you said one thing is misleading and combated it with something I say is misleading.
We’re talking about raising the rates on the top 2% of Americans. Whether the single richest (or 2nd richest) person in America and other people remotely comparable to him happens to pay a lower rate than someone in the middle class (or upper middle class) does not tell us anything. When Buffett was speaking, he was speaking about himself and other insanely wealthy people. The proposal is not targeting them. It is targeting the top 2% of earners. These are rich people by any estimation; however, there is a pretty damn big difference between a lawyer who makes $500,000 a year salaried job and a person like Buffett. Again, I am not saying that tax rates should not be raised; I am making a different point altogether.
I’m anything but moderate. I just don’t feel like I need to join a team with a bunch of people that don’t fully represent my viewpoints and cheer and get invested like it’s a sport. I get invested in the issues and not whether my team had someone make a stupid gaffe or got involved in an affair.
I think it is sad and pathetic that people feel like they need to join a political party. Republicans in Louisiana that feel like they personally got a win because Anthony Weiner embarrassed himself are a joke. If you are a Democrat and cheered for victories in Congress like they are chess pieces then you are supporting and cheering for imbecile scum like Sheila Jackson Lee.
However, you have given zero evidence to support your claims that most of Buffett’s income is unrealized gains…and, furthermore, it is besides the point since Buffett was talking about the tax rate on his realized gains.
Lots of insanely-wealthy people ranging from Warren Buffett to Mitt Romney will pay considerably more in taxes under the proposals that are being floated (be they the increase in the top tax rate, the increase in the top tax rate on capital gains, the increase on the tax rate on dividends, the “Buffett rule”, etc.) You seem determined to discredit this notion with lots of weak, mainly besides-the-point arguments.
You need a cite that most of Buffett’s income is unrealized? We know it is because by SEC filings he is the controlling shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway is taxed as a corporation and not a pass through entity. His only publicly reported dispositions of Berkshire Hathaway stock of any note were charitable contributions to the likes of the Gates Foundation; every disposition that he makes is required to be publicly reported. His entire net worth according to the Forbes 400 is his 3.7 million shares of stock in Berkshire Hathaway. He makes an annual salary of only $100,000 with bonuses of another $400,000.
I mean, I can give you a cite, but I think this is pretty common knowledge. What would satisfy you?
You can literally track his net worth every day on your own. Today his stock was down $273, so he had an unrealized loss of about $1 billion today.
Now I understand that his tax return is only realized. That’s my entire point. He controls exactly how much he wants to realize in any given year.
I think you are mistaking my Buffett talk as something different than it is. The ubber wealthy like Buffett (of which there are only probably a few dozen people that are anything remotely comparable) do not play by the same rules because the rules are not designed to handle a situation like theirs. When you can control how much you get paid, when you get paid, and in exactly what form that payment comes, it changes things dramatically. I am not saying this to criticize the so-called Buffett Rule. I am saying that Buffett is not a good comparison to other people in the top 2%. When you want to talk about why the top 2% should pay more, talk about their typical financial situation not someone like Buffett. Romney, although also very wealthy, would be a much better example to use. Of course the way to tax people like Romney more would be to tax carried interest as ordinary income.
Just to add another point, we are not talking about people ranging from Warren Buffett to Mitt Romney. We are talking about families that make above $250,000. To put it in perspective, that family would need to work for the next 184,000 years to get up to Buffett’s net worth, which is after Buffett gave away something like $20 billion to charity. The top 0.1% of tax filers in this country (~140,000 families) made an average income of $2.8 million; it would take them 16,429 years to get to Buffett.
In summary, I am not saying the tax rates on the top 2% don’t need to rise. I’m not saying they are not absurdly rich; they are among the richest tiny fraction of people that will ever walk on Planet Earth. I am saying that Warren Buffett is not the poster child for this group. The person in this group is more likely to be a lawyer or an engineer with outstanding student loans and a mortgage. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t pay more taxes given the current fiscal situation of the U.S. though.
Okay, I’ve looked around some on the internet and I see that you are right that most of his income is from unrealized capital gains. (Although his realized income is still a lot higher than in the hundreds of thousands that you are talking about. He apparently paid $7 million in income tax on about $40 million of reported income in 2010. This is, however, admittedly dwarfed by his estimated $10 billion in income from the raise of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock price.)
In response to Arthur Laffer’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal on this, Buffett said:
For the umpteenth time, we hear the same misleading meme from someone who doesn’t seem to understand the distinction between marginal and average tax rates.
To take a specific example, let’s assume a married couple with adjusted income of $280,000. The first $247,000 of their income will be taxed the same regardless of whether Bush’s tax rates are retained, or Obama’s plan is put into effect. Let me repeat that in a larger font: The first $247,000 of their income will be taxed the same regardless of whether Bush’s tax rates are retained, or Obama’s plan is put into effect.
Only the income above $247,000 will be subject to the higher tax – 36% instead of 33%. So the $280,000 couple will pay an additional $990, or about 0.35% of their adjusted income. Not a small sum, perhaps, but hardly the confiscatory “whizzing on the Job Creators” that right-wingers (and some moderates ) babble about.
Jackmannii: Actually, that was exactly my first reaction when I saw this thread…i.e., that a much better title would have been “Whose afraid of the fiscal cliff?”
No shit that it is marginal rates. Do you think you are correcting me? Where did I ever indicate that I thought it wasn’t? In other words, what is the point of this diatribe?
Also, still waiting on you to say how I misrepresented you.
Who are going to be barely affected at all by this increase. Even if we concede a 3% overall increase in federal taxes is a supreme sacrifice and hurts very much, it’s not until we hit $750k or so that the cumulative marginal increase in their tax rates even breaks 2%. A dual-income lawyer family (at around $500k if they’re both at the absolute theoretical peak of their careers, unless one happens to be an executive or an extreme outlier) is going to see a 1.5% aggregate increase, which is peanuts.
So it’s possible to concede that a two-surgeon family might feel the full 3% bite, but otherwise this tax increase is squarely targeted at business owners, C-level types, and the wealthy.
So talking about “incomes over 250,000” as though they’re square in the crosshairs of this tax increase is misleading. You have to be well into the 7-figure incomes before you feel the full wrath of this already laughably low top tier tax rate.
) babble about.