 |
| Buffett's Impoverished Secretary |
Money shot:
Insofar as Buffet (like Mitt Romney) earns income primarily from capital gains, which are taxed at 15 percent (and according to Obama need to be raised for reasons of fairness), we need to determine how much income a taxpayer like Bosanek must earn in order to pay an average tax rate above fifteen percent. This is easy to do.How many people would sign up right now to fill the spot for the unfortunately treated secretary?
The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an adjusted gross income between $100,000 and $200,000 pay an average rate of twelve percent. This is below Buffet’s rate; so she must earn more than that. Taxpayers earning adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, pay an average tax rate of nineteen percent. Therefore Buffet must pay Debbie Bosanke a salary above two hundred thousand.
Me too.
Posts
Buffet and his secretary both know what she earns. Forbes does not know and is speculating. There are too many variables for Forbes to have any idea what the secretary earns in wages.
ReplyDeleteTaylor, I have to imagine the IRS knows what the rates are they charge taxpayers based upon salary, don't you?
ReplyDeleteYou go ahead and listen to Buffet and Obama and see how soon you are paying the tax increase they seek.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/FACT-CHECK-Are-rich-taxed-less-than-secretaries-2179007.php
"The middle-class bait-and-switch. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Buffett speaks about raising taxes only on the rich. But somehow he ignores that the President's tax increase starts at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Mr. Obama ought to call them "thousandaires," but that probably doesn't poll as well."
"The President needs to levy his tax increase at such a lower income level because that's where the money is. In 2009, 237,000 taxpayers reported income above $1 million and they paid $178 billion in taxes. A mere 8,274 filers reported income above $10 million, and they paid only $54 billion in taxes."
"But 3.92 million reported income above $200,000 in 2009, and they paid $434 billion in taxes. To put it another way, roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama's plan aren't millionaires, and 99.99% aren't billionaires."
"Mr. Buffett says it's only "fair" to raise his taxes, but he's lending his credibility to raising taxes on millions of middle-class earners for whom a few extra thousand dollars in after-tax income is a big deal. Unlike Mr. Buffett, those middle-class earners aren't rich and may earn $250,000 for only a few years of their working lives. How is that fair?"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576504650932556900.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Lew....since when is an income over 200,000/yr "Middle Class"? The median income in the US is just over 26,000/yr. That means that 156.5 million Americans make more that 26,000/yr and 156.5 million make less than 26,000/yr. The AVERAGE US household takes in about 63,000/yr. You might be able to stretch the "Middle Class" up to 90,000 or maybe even 100,000/yr. To think that someone who makes over 200000/yr cannot afford even an extra 1000.00/mo in taxes is absurd when half of our population is making do on 26,000 or less. You may not like it Lew, but no matter how hard most of those people try they will never be able to increase their state in life. All of the Churches and Charitable organizations in the US could not provide enough support for these people in the current state of our Economy. This massive shift has not taken place simply because Barak Obama is the President. This shift has been taking place because of the policies put into place by Ronald Reagan and further by every President since, including Mr. Clinton. The policies are not working and you and your Conservative ilk's plan? Make the policies even more loose! Lower taxes on everyone and shrink Government until it can help no one, but be sure and make that Defense budget bigger and bigger every year! It's exasperating to listen to people like you and Victoria continue to repeat this line of bull day in and day out when it would be foolish to try and return to the path we were on and are now slowly moving away from.
ReplyDeleteAh it is going to be a long and torturous run up to the election for Repugs in their attempts to convince the electorate that the wealthy should pay a lower tax rate than the common wage earner and that keeping your money in the Caymans is the patriotic thing to do. Tough job.
ReplyDeleteHi vern,
ReplyDeleteAccording to the latest US census figures, 2009 median US income is $50,221.00.
What's exasperating are guys like you that can't do basic math. There are 237,000 households in the US that make 1 million dollars a year or more. So, $1,000 a month X 12 months is $12,000 a year. So $12,000 a year X 237,000 is $28,440,000 or $28.44 million dollars. This year's federal budget deficit is $1.3 trillion dollars or 1,300,000 million dollars. So your idea gives your 156 million Americans below the medium income level about 50 cents each.
So you do the math vern. How much will you have to raise taxes on those 237,000 millionaires to get what you think is "fair"? Or paying off the $15 trillion debt.....the 15,000,000 million dollar debt. If you want to get the entire 1%, that's everyone that makes over $383,000, see if that makes a difference worth a pinch of puppy poop.
Maybe you might want to try educating 100% of kids in this country instead of only half. Or try creating real, family wage jobs instead of fantasy green jobs and more bureaucrats. Federal spending is up 28% since the president was elected and the national debt up 43%. Quit selling the myth that they are victims of a rigged system and "owed" by someone else rather than being capable of making a difference in their own lives. If you want to be like Greece, why don't you just move there and give the rest of us a break.
Hi iago,
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna have to type faster. : ) I guess you really have them over a barrel..... or you could just flash that photo of the president with the head of his jobs creation council, GE CEO Jeffrey Immeldt. Immeldt managed to crash GE's stock price, pay no corporate income taxes last year, and opened med tech and jet engine units in China. I might be wrong but I don't think China is one of those 57 states Obama was talking about. Or his other bilionaire pal, George Soros, who made his money in currency speculation and convicted of insider trading in France. There are plenty of left wing millionaires and billionaires.
Instead of name calling and finger pointing, why don't you try expressing your ideas and we can kick them around?
I don't care about the political stripe of a millionaire. They should not pay tax at a lower rate than a wage earner. Please tell me why they should. Don't tell me you were one of those Repugs that opposed the extension of the payroll tax reduction? It would not surprise me. As I said, tough job.
ReplyDeletePoor limpy, still can't figure out basic arithmetic.
ReplyDeleteLook at Romney, who Paid over $3,000,000 in taxes.
You and other ill educated people cry "rate," but guess what? The government doesn't fund anything by rate. They fund it by dollars and those wealthy you cry don't pay their fair share are the one pay the highest dollar amount of everybody.
On top of that they fund several charities set up to help the poor and dullards like you come along wanting them to pay more while you sit on your ass paying nothing!
As Margaret Thatcher said, you don't care how poor the poor get, just as long as the rich are poorer.
In kindergarten terms you can understand, you're killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
Iago,
ReplyDeleteHe did.....the money Buffet, Romney, and even you invest has already been taxed when you got it the first time. Your return is taxed at 20%. You can bet his secretary isn't paying 30% either on her 6 figure income. Just in case you didn't know, the rate for the rich under the "ruinous" Bush tax cuts is 36.5%, so even the millionaire Obama isn't paying his fair share.
So I will take your word about not caring about the political stripe of the rich person.....but what they pay. The information on what rich democrats pay is available, much of it interesting. See we've made progress here.
There's a lot of baloney on this topic, not helped by a disengenous President, who knows the differences in those situations, and a lap dog press not challenging him on it.
Tough job. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteIt is also a shameful dirty job. Not worthy of minimum wage. To quote Mr. T: "I pity the fools."
ReplyDeleteHey Mike, it's you who should get more educated in arithmetic. 237,000 times $12,000 is actually $2,844,000,000. That would be $2.8 billion, not 28.44 million, you are off by a factor of 100. No matter though, the point you make about the total amount remains valid; you'd need another factor of 100 to make a dent in the debt. However, I will always refer back to Dick Cheney of the GOP under "W" who told us that "deficits don't matter, Reagan proved it", when GOP spending doubled the debt in 6 years while tripling the Social Security debt and multiplying earmarks from 2200 to over 14000. Now the GOP leadership becomes fiscally conservative? Their honesty and credibility is ZERO. And worse, their actions gave a green light to BO and the Dems to keep spending for they are just following previous GOP policy.
ReplyDeleteAnd Lew, you actually make sense when you talk about government spending. Now if you would only apply that philosophy to your GOP. How can you believe anything they tell you after the 6 years of fiscal disaster, lies and corruption of the GOP Congress under "W" when most of those same GOP politicians are still there? I have ceased to believe anything the Dem leadership spews anymore.
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteMoney I EARN is also taxed before I get it....why don't I get to pay 15%? Since when is unearned income better(the perception) than what some blue collar worker who actually works?
Hi dj,
ReplyDeleteThanks dj, good thing I'm not helping out in the schools like you are. : )
Vern, you have the same "loophole" as they do. When you invest in a mutual fund, savings account, or other investment where you derive a capital gain you get taxed at 15% too. Your certainly free to pay 30 or 35% if you want when you sell your house instead of 15% if it makes you feel better. No one is saying it is better, just already taxed once as income and it spurs economic growth.
I'm intrigued about your definition that capital gains from investment are "unearned income." How so? I suspect that if you have a pension, be it private, union, or public....it is funded largely by those "unearned monies". Got a 401k? Same thing. The mortgage you have is funded by investment money. Investment money fund banks, businesses, housing, local governments, and a myriad of other things that provide jobs and pay for services...and that money is taxed a number of times as it flows through the economy. You might not like it, but how will teh economy thrive without it?
If your in a blue collar trade, your construction project is intially funded by other peoples' money being lent out to buy the property and materials as well as labor. Unearned income also funds school bonds and many other government projects. If you work in a factory, did you construct and pay for the facility that is providing your work or was it someone else's "unearned income?"
As that "unearned income" funds a tremendous amount of economic growth, sounds like taxing it a 15% to encourage investment in the economy is a pretty good deal all the way around.
Honestly, the amount the secretary makes and/or pays is irrelevant. If Buffett was truly sincere in his "I should pay more" mantra, he'd pay himself a salary instead of taking his income from cap gains. Until he does, he is disingenuous and his words should fall on deaf ears.
ReplyDeleteThen why oh why is interest from simple savings that most ordinary people "earn" taxed as "ordinary" income instead of 15%? Is that not investing and making the savings available to a bank for loaning? The bank takes savings, pays paltry interest rates, gets FDIC insurance for its reckless practices, loans out the savings using more reckless practices knowing full well the loan will be sold, eventually ending up in Fanny or Freddy, makes the profit, and pays taxes at the cap gains rate. What a scam.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Mike, your concept of a 401K or any other tax deferred account is wrong. ALL distributions from tax deferred accounts are treated as ordinary income and taxed at the household rate. The earnings in the tax deferred account are taxed the same way too. The advantage of these accounts is those earnings are not taxed till distributed, so they can grow faster.
ReplyDeleteThe primary issue of today regarding cap gains investment is completely different than what it was before the proliferation of computer trading. Now so called "investors" trade millions of shares in micro seconds, holding on to said shares until the computer detects a fraction of a penny profit per share before dumping them. Indeed Mike, so called "investors" just manipulate monetary instruments and take a cut off the top. They care not for what they do to the markets or companies they profit from. Why do you think there have been such huge swings in the DJIA and S&P and volatility is out of sight?
Hi dj,
ReplyDeleteYour right about that, what I was trying to poorly explain to vern was that the money in his 401k was lent out by the holding institution to finance other finacial activites ie its capital.
Yes, the computers....I remember that huge dive year bofore last was supposedly caused by someone's fat finger hitting the wrong key. The capital gains tax is not to blame for that and I don't how your going to limit computer trading and put that genie back in the bottle. Your a tech guy so you probably have a much better understanding of how that works. Sounds like the economic equivalent of a doomsday machine.