Obama: Cut the deficit by taxing the rich

[axt113]

Baalzamon said:

axt113 said:

Sorry, but there are quite a few flaws in your argument Stick, first you're comparing two seperate measures, one is percentage of pretax income  and the other is percentage of income tax revenue, the problem with that is you don't give any values for what the pretax revenus is compared to what the tax revenue is.

In addition, you only took into account pre-tax income, as I noted in my comment earlier, I referred to wealth which is more than just income, as many of the rich are quick to point out, they have low incomes but high wealth, due to the fact that their money comes from other sources than just income like capital gains, so by just pointing to pre-tax income ignores much of their wealth, Buffett for example is quick to point out that his taxes are extrmely low due to most of his money coming from investments.

Can you please give a link showing where Buffett says that...because there are taxes on investment gains just like everything else, so I really don't think that has truth to it.

Taxes on capital gains and dividends are not income taxes, and often have lower rates

 

Here is the stuff on Buffett

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ece

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1126/042b.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

 

From NYT:

 

Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”