Another Obama Lie: The Rich Don't Pay Less Taxes

• gut

  jmog;933541 wrote:Easy fix...lower corporate rates but eliminate many (if not all) of corporate deductions. Then all corporations (assuming they are profiting in the top "1%") pay the same "flat" tax.

  The wealthy usually have a diversified portfolio, so most are going to be double-taxed at the average corporate rates, something like 22%, plus the 15% capital gains tax. Not to mention, corporate tax liabilities vary wildly year to year, so while I'm skeptical of the math in "as high as 42% didn't pay US federal income taxes", it's not the same companies year after year. A company has a bad year and that is carried forward to eliminate a liability the following year, or they make some major capital investments. That's far more common than massive credits eliminating liabilities (cue the predictable story about GE)
  
  Then we can talk about profits on foreign income...A company loses money in the US, making all it's profits in say Asia, and doesn't pay US taxes (but does in Asia). Unfair! This must be corrected! Then we have foreign companies making a profit in the US that don't pay taxes here....See the double standard? It's wrong for US domiciled companies to be taxed abroad, but it would also be wrong for profits to be repatriated to be taxed in the case of foreign companies. And, in truth, many global corporations are subject to some degree of double taxation (and they will be in the US, when they choose to repatriate). But it's also obvious that you keep profits in higher growth, lower tax jurisdictions to self-fund capital expenditures.
  
  The other trick is to take out debt in higher tax jurisdictions to maximize the net total deductions. That's an interesting paradigm, because as a result the higher relative corporate rates in the US help to create a very deep and liquid debt market, which we sort of need to help offset the trade deficit.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  BoatShoes;933382 wrote:Such kind words. My poor grammar mistakes on the internetz aside, it seems that you are not interested in the facts. There are lot of millionaires earning income in capital gains, even taking into account entity-level taxation, that pay lower average tax rates than middle class americans who earn income through their labor and certainly high earners like MB.
  
  It's happening. Plain and simple. You want to go ahead and say it's perfectly fine and shouldn't be used to justify class warfare rhetoric or bigger government, that's another story.

  It's comparing apples to potatoes. The original debate was about income taxes on wages and not on all taxes on all forms of income, was it not?
  
  And class warfare rhetoric is just that -- rhetoric. Definition: language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, but which is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.
• Manhattan Buckeye

  From the Reuters link:
  
  "The report did not name any companies. The GAO said corporations escaped paying federal income taxes for a variety of reasons including operating losses, tax credits and an ability to use transactions within the company to shift income to low tax countries."
  
  So to put it succinctly no corporations were identified (thus not only does it include the Microsoft's of the world but also ma and pa's c corp. start up that almost certainly loses money the first year or so) and for a seven year period (1998-2005) in which we had 3 very rough years (although that pale in comparison to the current Obamaconomy mess) it is shocking that some companies may have operated at a loss?
  
  The study is worse than worthless to the discussion here, it is misleading.