Rereading my last post, parts seemed snarky. I apologize for that.
But please realize that it’s extremely frustrating to contend with all the lies and gibberish in the political discourse of post-rational America.
I wouldn’t have even been able to find Mr. Buffett’s comment for the quote if I didn’t know to start at nytimes.com. Google just turns up hundreds of hits parroting the lies of Mark Perry or FoxNews. (And some right-wingers, afraid to learn truths, actually have nytimes.com blacklisted. :smack: )
Participating in some of these debates makes me sad about the dismal future of America. But I shouldn’t take out my anger on innocent victims of right-wing propaganda.
Just as a semantics thing - Buffett could send in a check for a larger amount than his taxes owed, but that wouldn’t actually be paying more tax - it would be a donation to the government.
Actually, on this same nitpick, I wonder if the IRS would accept overpayments.
Certainly there are ways to gift money to the government.
But the IRS might refuse overpayments because what if people later try to deduct that amount from their tax liability? Or claim it was an honest mistake?
It’s hassle if nothing else.
This is a factual question for which I can offer some insight since I once received a “Thank you for your donation to the national debt” letter from the IRS ! The checks in question were not intended as donation. (It’s a longish story I’d tell in BBQ Pit if at all.)
You didn’t even read my cite, septimus, did you? You just clicked on it, noticed that the second column in the table was labeled " Average Federal Income Tax Rate (%)," looked at the name on the blog, and left. It shows.
If you had read what I posted, you would have seen this, directly below the table:
[QUOTE=Mark Perry, quoting Warren Buffett]
Warren Buffett started it by saying this in the NY Times:
"…Blessings are showered upon [the super-rich] by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."
[/QUOTE]
Please, point out where Professor Perry lies about or otherwise misrepresents what Buffett said.
But just for shits and giggles, let’s actually look at the data provided by that right wing pawn of Fox News and American Enterprise Institute organization known as the Internal Revenue Service. Perry quotes the data found in Table 1.1. The numbers can be found in column S, rows 10 through 29 of this excel spreadsheet. In cell 29, we see that the IRS reports that people with annual incomes above $10 million payed, on average, 26.3% of their income in income taxes, about 50% more than Warren Buffett is paying. Now, if I remember correctly how to work with percentages, you income tax rate is (income tax)/income, and your combined tax rate for income and payroll taxes will be (income tax + payroll tax)/income. So, unless you actually made money from your payroll taxes, you combined tax rate will be higher than the rate for income tax by itself. That is, Buffet’s 17.4% federal tax rate is unusual, even for people with 8 or more digit yearly incomes.
Of course, if you had actually read my cite, you would have seen this figure, compiled from this data from the Congressional Budget Office (pdf, page 6), giving average tax rates for ALL federal taxes. That is, it includes income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate taxes and income taxes. Let me be clear: this data is accounts for ALL federal taxes, which includes payroll taxes. Because, you see, it’s important to recognize that this CBO data includes payroll taxes.
Anyway, the CBO data states that those in the top 1% of the income distribution pay, on average, 29.5% of their income in federal taxes. This is higher than the average tax rate payed in any quintile. Thus, it seems that Buffett’s 17.4% tax rate and the 36-or-so% tax rate of his secretary are unusual, and not indicative of a general problem with regressive taxes.
This is a lie. Perry’s blog post links directly to Buffett’s piece in the NY Times. (gasp!! is it fair to actually read the article in question, rather than simply asserting that it is a lie?)
Dr Love, Buffett seems to be talking about billionaires, or what he calls the “mega rich”. Your analysis focuses on the top 1% (which are those on $350k pa and up according to wiki) or people with over $10m pa incomes (which is far less than a billionaire would earn, on average). So Buffett may have an unusually low tax rate for those with high to very high incomes, but he may well be correct in saying he has an ordinarily low tax rate for someone with an extremely high income.
The thing is, there aren’t that many billionaires. The last 16 people listed on The Forbes 400 list all have net worth of about a billion dollars. So let’s imagine that Buffett is right, and these people pay a small percentage of their income in federal taxes, and consider some of the arguments against Buffett voluntarily giving more money to the government:
In the NY Times article, Buffett said “Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income…” From this, we can calculate that his taxable income was roughly $40 billion. Later,
[QUOTE=Warren Buffett]
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
[/QUOTE]
That is, the entire top 400 income earners in the US earned less that 3 times what Buffett earned alone. So, we’re expected to believe that Buffett voluntarily giving more money would be in such a small amount as to be “silly,” “pointless,” and like “taking an eyedropper full of water out of the ocean.” And yet, increasing the taxes on these people, effectively taking three eyedroppers out of the ocean, well, now we’re getting somewhere!
If you read the whole of Buffett’s article though, he starts with himself and his uber rich peers and how small a percentage they pay, but this seems to be given as more of an obscene example than as an argument that entirely justifies his final conclusion, namely that all who earn over $1m should pay a higher rate.
“Both IRS and CBO income tax data disagree with Buffett.”
Do not accuse me of selective editing; this is the sole sentence in that post.
What you now seem to agree is that
[ul][li] “income tax” was a mischaracterization of both Buffett’s claim and your new version of “CBO data.”[/li][li] that IRS data did not and could not disagree with Buffett for reasons I gave.[/li][li] that a claim can be constructed from CBO data (though not CBO income tax data) which takes a different perspective than Buffett’s, though not actually disagreeing with Buffett’s specific claim.[/li][/ul]
Correct?
If I imputed an error to Prof. Perry which was actually your own error, Dr. Love, then I apologize.
I will admit that, upon seeing the “IRS and CBO income tax data disagree with Buffett” claim to be blatantly absurd, I did not scrutinize the Perry blog to see whether a related, but true, claim could be constructed.
Life is short, and scrutinizing Perry blogs for errors is not one of my priorities. Will I still be allowed to point out errors in these threads? Or, like Sam Stone, are you going to insist we watch the 8-hour Friedman video before contributing?
Ok, I’ll admit that I was lax with my language. I’ll apologize for that. But you go on:
Of course you didn’t scrutinize it, you didn’t even read it! It’s not an 8-hour video, it’s a 700 word blog post, less than 3/4 the length of Buffett’s article. But despite not reading my cite, you feel justified in declaring it to be full of lies, accusing the author of trying to hide the actual text of Buffett’s article, and taking a swipe at my intelligence. And now that you’ve been called on all these things, you’re backpedaling as fast as you can and blaming everything on a small technical misstep in my post, that would have been clarified if you had read 700 words.
Ok, then, what exactly is Buffett’s specific claim? Please, give me a quote from his article (which, by the way, is here, published in the New York Times. I wouldn’t want to think that I’m dishonest for not linking directly to the source material). Before I explain again what the IRS and CBO data mean, only to have you again backpedal while insulting my intelligence and character, I want to know exactly what claim I’m trying to disprove. Is he claiming that the mega-rich systematically pay a lower income tax rate than the middle class? What, exactly, is his definition of of “mega-rich?”
Ok, but if he’s only talking about the situation at the extreme high end of the distribution (the thousandth of a percent level) why does he bring it up when trying to argue for raising taxes on those making 7 figures or more? He’s either ignorant of the facts and believes that his situation is typical of those at a lower income level, or he’s deliberately trying to mislead people by citing only examples that are atypical of the 7+ figure crowd.
I don’t like to get into interminable and pointless “No, you said …” exchanges, but here’s a post too wrong to ignore:
I’d have been happy to accept the apology. But you go on:
I called you on a very clear error. Case closed. There was no reason to read on. Statistics can be phrased in different ways; what else is new?
The problem here was your confusing “income taxes” with Buffett’s “income and payroll taxes.” Error corrected. It’s over.
Perhaps in future you will have a useful comment from Prof. Perry I will want to read. If so, I hope you phrase your one-sentence lead-in so as not to be an off-putting blatant misstatement.
Who’s getting carried away? Did I write “full of lies”? No. Did I accuse the author of hiding text? No. Did I swipe at your intelligence? I don’t see that.
I don’t know about blaming “everything”, but to claim Buffett was wrong, while ignoring that he includes payroll taxes, seems more than a “small technical misstep.”
Since you’ve linked to and read Buffett’s comment, your question here seems strange. For some of you, this is a debating competition, or it’s about trying to win word games, or finding a tricky way to present statistics. For me, it’s about insights into improving public policy. Anyway here is Buffett’s claim:
[QUOTE=Warren Buffett]
But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office.
…
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
[/QUOTE]
Straightforward. Checkable, more or less. And aimed at sincere policy debate, not word games or statistical tricks.
In this blog post, Professor Mark Perry uses income tax data from the IRS and data from the Congressional Budget Office on rates for all individual federal taxes to demonstrate that the combined income and payroll tax rates paid by Warren Buffett and the other 20 people in his office are not indicative of the rates paid average rich and middle income people.
Will you read it now?
No, you didn’t use the exact phrase “full of lies.” You did write:
[ul][li]“But what we mustn’t do (at least if we pretend to be honest) is to ignore Mr. Buffett’s actual words; pretend he said something different; and invent lies.”[/li][li]“…I hope learning that Mark J. Perry is a liar…”[/li][li]“…it’s extremely frustrating to contend with all the lies and gibberish…”[/li][li]“…hundreds of hits parroting the lies of Mark Perry…”[/ul][/li]You also accused the author, and those with similar opinions, of trying to hide Buffett’s actual text:
[ul][li]“But what we mustn’t do (at least if we pretend to be honest) is to ignore Mr. Buffett’s actual words; pretend he said something different; and invent lies.”[/li][li]“I wouldn’t have even been able to find Mr. Buffett’s comment for the quote if I didn’t know to start at nytimes.com.” (this, despite the fact that Perry’s blog post had a link directly to Buffett’s piece).[/li][li]“And some right-wingers, afraid to learn truths, actually have nytimes.com blacklisted.”[/ul][/li]You made two remarks, clearly directed at me since I’m the one who posted the link to Perry’s blog, disparaging the intelligence of people who get their information from sources such as Fox News* or AEI:
[ul][li]“…those who get their information from FoxNews and the American Enterprise Institute tend to have low attention spans…”[/li][li]“But I shouldn’t take out my anger on innocent victims of right-wing propaganda.”[/ul][/li]
Hahahahahaha! That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week. You’re the one arguing that using “income tax” in the colloquial sense of “a tax levied on income,” as I did in my first post, rather than as a specific term that excludes payroll taxes is such an egregious error that it exempts you from having to understand the facts being presented. You’re the one trying to make the oh-so-important distinction between referring to a blog post as “the lies of Mark Perry” and referring to it as being “full of lies.” And you’re accusing me of playing word games? :rolleyes:
As far as I am aware, those claims are factually correct. Then, in the interest of having a “sincere policy debate, not word games or statistical tricks”, wouldn’t you agree that Buffet has presented information about, at most, 821 people (Buffet himself, the “other 20 people in [his] office” and the “400 Americans reporting the largest income”** in 1992 and 2008? Would you further agree that, if we are to have a “sincere policy debate”** free of “statistical tricks,”** that if we are to make policy recommendations based solely on Buffett’s claim, that these policy recommendations should be limited to including only those 821 (at most) people?
*I didn’t mention it before, but that comment was really quite strange. No one mentioned Fox News, and Mark Perry has no affiliation with Fox News as far as I can tell.
**Wouldn’t want to give any leeway for you to accuse me of playing word games.
What nonsense is Buffet spouting?
You ALWAYS have the option to pay more-there is a box marked “Payments to reduce the national debt”.
So while BUffett pays teams of lawyers to find how to pay the minimum due, he lectures us about paying more-hilarious!
Actually, this country doesn’t have a revenue problem-it has a spending problem. How much do those 200,000 Federal employees (added to the payroll under Obama) cost us?
