Taxes are the means through which we pay for the infrastructure of civilization. While I can’t exactly say I’m happy to pay them, I understand, expect and accept that I will always pay a big chunk of my wages out in taxes each year. I believe in community, taxes come with it.
Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has a piece on the NYTimes’ Economix blog that makes a bunch of great points. Here are a few I particularly like:
We live in a country where the most visible support for raising taxes on the rich comes from … the rich. So much for the seeming dictates of economic rationality and the logic of class war.
The Wealth for the Common Good Web site features pictures of some of our most economically successful citizens calling for higher taxes on themselves.
Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, published an commentary in this paper calling for an increase in the top federal marginal tax rate to 50 percent on all income over $1 million per year. He insisted it would not reduce his incentive to work.
At the opposite end of the income spectrum, passionate opposition to the estate tax is expressed by men and women who face no risk of ever paying it. The progressive group Citizens for Tax Justice observes that the percentage of households with income under $30,000 complaining that federal income taxes are too high exceeds the percentage even paying federal income taxes.
Misrepresentation?
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points to superficial reporting on Tax Freedom Day, a term copyrighted by the Tax Foundation to describe the day by which the average taxpayer has earned enough money to cover his or her tax liability for the year. About 80 percent of Americans pay less than the average, which is pulled up by a relatively small number of very high payers. As a result Tax Freedom Day comes earlier in the year for most Americans than for the average.
Differences in federal income tax rates are greater in theory than in practice. Warren Buffett famously observed that he paid a lower percentage of his income in federal taxes than his office staff in 2007, largely because income from capital in the form of dividends and capital gains is taxed at a lower rate than income from labor in the form of earnings.
Warren Buffet, my hero:
Mr. Buffett offered to wager $1 million with anyone on the Forbes’ richest 400 individuals list that the average share of their income paid in taxes was lower than the average share paid by their receptionists and secretaries. He got no takers.
Mr. Buffett has peeved many of his fellow billionaires by giving much of his money away as well as advocating higher taxes for the rich. The man has so much class that he can talk about class war. (He explained, in 2006, that his class was winning).
RELATED: Where I live they had to cancel summer school because of budget cuts. Which budget cuts? Across the board for all schools in Georgia? NO! Budget cuts that affect ONLY the poorest schools in the state. And while our pols blather on about holding the line on taxes, they authorize unjust and unneccessary rate hikes for regulated utilities. One man’s fee is another man’s tax…