Hullabaloo

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

 

Who are the 47%?

by digby

Have you been wondering who those lazy 47%ers who refuse to pay their fair share of income taxes are?You know, the ones who need to kick in so that the millionaire jahbcreaters don't have to?

Here's who they are (this is from a report from 2004)

The zero-tax filers will be largely low-income. Indeed, 75 percent of them will earn less than $20,000 per year and 97 percent will earn less than $40,000. Fewer than 1 percent will earn more than $75,000 per year – a group comprised largely of business owners whose tax liabilities will be erased due to business losses, carry-overs from prior year AMT payments, or foreign tax credits.

Zero-tax filers will be overwhelmingly young. Looking at the age of the primary breadwinner on these tax returns, only 22 percent are 45 years old or older. More than one-third (36 percent) are younger than age 25, and 56 percent are younger than age 35.

Interestingly, there is a large cluster of households (22.4 percent) where the principal wage earner is between the ages of 35 and 44. Most likely, these are modest-income families who are benefitting most from the increased value of the child credit to $1,000...

In general, then, those who don’t pay federal income taxes tend to be young families with children, often headed by a single mother, where the head of household has a job and is trying to make ends meet on a modest income.

Those are the lazy pieces of garbage who refuse to make pay more in taxes so that Paris Hilton doesn't have to. Single mothers. Young people. Families making less than $20, 000 a year. That's who the burden should fall upon. They are losers who must pay.

This is a similar report from this year:

About 46 percent of American households will pay no federal individual income tax in 2011, roughly half of them because of structural features of the income tax that provide basic exemptions for subsistence level income and for dependents. The other half are nontaxable because tax expenditures— special provisions of the tax code that benefit selected taxpayers or activities—wipe out tax liabilities and, in the case of refundable credits, result in net payments from the government. Most important of those tax expenditures are provisions that benefit senior citizens and low-income working families with children.

So the greedy geezers aren't paying their fair share either? Damn them.

How on earth did such a horrible thing happen?

In 1997, Congress enacted a new $500 per-child tax credit and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income workers. The 2003 tax cuts increased the value of the child credit to $1,000. These two tax credits – especially the child credit – have had a powerful effect on reducing, and many cases eliminating, the income tax liability for millions of Americans. Of the 44 million tax returns that pay no income taxes, 34 percent claim the EITC and 50 percent claim the child credit. Tax Foundation economists estimate that the expanded child credit alone knocked 5.8 million families with children off the tax rolls.

Essentially, that 53% percent of very, very superior human beings who work hard for a living and don't ask for any handouts want to take the $1,000 of the EITC out of the mouths of poor children rather than ask millionaires to pay more. There's really no other way to look at it.

*I know I don't need to reiterate that all of these people do pay taxes of many different kinds. Anyone with common sense already knows that.

Update: Important to also note that federal income taxes only make up 22% of all the taxes paid in this country.

Those lucky duckies are participating in a whole lot of the other 78%.

h/t to JH
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digby 10/11/2011 04:30:00 PM |