About 15%

[Anonymous]

Yes you pay taxes when you make money. No you are not being taxes twice.

[Anonymous]

Fairness? More like republicans hate the middle class. Wage earners get taxed more because...the republican want to use the government to punish wage earns and reward the rich? No free market working there or smaller government. This shows how bankrupt the conservatives are.
All earning must be taxed the same. Let's lower all the wage earners taxes and bring capital gains up to that new level. Then we can let the market forces act without big government picking winners and losers.

[TheManWithAUsername]

Anonymous wrote:First, there are studies about tax rates and incentives. They show movement.

Link?

Anonymous wrote:Second, the largest effect is about investment versus consumption. Should I invest this money or got to Europe for two weeks, staying in fine hotels? If I lose half my investment gains to taxes, I consume more. Those effects become very complicated for the creation of social wealth but they are very real.

This is very sloppily expressed. What is your point - that we want lower cap gains to encourage investment over consumption?

Anonymous wrote:Then, on the fairness side, stop obsessing over the super rich for one minute and think about the rest of us. I was taxed on each dollar when I made it. Now I'm going to be taxed on it when I invest it. Do I really have to pay 35% each time?

No, you'd be taxed on what you made on the investment. You get taxed on the return, not on the entirety of the investment.

Even if you were right - and you're not remotely so - the only possible solution to that is to cut the taxes for the super rich? That's a pretty big baby with your measly bathwater.

No matter what, you'd be paying income tax plus cap gains, while they'd only be paying cap gains. To address your concerns, it would only make sense to maximize cap gains, so that income tax would be a relatively smaller part of your burden.

[Anonymous]

Obviously I meant you get taxed on the return. You love to assume others are rock dumb.

[Anonymous]

P.S. Mitt couldn't "consume" even 50% of his investment income if he tried.

Although, if he did, it would be the first move he ever made to boost the economy.

[takoma]

Anonymous wrote:Obviously I meant you get taxed on the return. You love to assume others are rock dumb.

He just corrected your misstatement; he said nothing about your intelligence. Just as I am assuming it's just a momentary over-sensitivity that caused you to react that way rather than a lack of ability to comprehend the difference between a correction and an accusation.

BTW, on the question of investment vs consumption, I think it worth recalling that consumption is what drives the economy, and investment goes where consumption is expected.

[Anonymous]

As long as Romney followed our tax laws when he earned the money the first time and on the investment income on that money it is a non-issue. You may not like the laws as written, and paying the rate required by law is not a crime. The media just wants to make it one.

[takoma]

Anonymous wrote:As long as Romney followed our tax laws when he earned the money the first time and on the investment income on that money it is a non-issue. You may not like the laws as written, and paying the rate required by law is not a crime. The media just wants to make it one.

It's Romney's hesitancy, not the media, that is making an issue of this. As Gingrich said, if Romney did follow the law, why hesitate?

A possibility for the hesitancy is that Romney knows that highlighting the laws he followed will exacerbate the 99% vs 1% issues and undermine the GOP goal of minimizing taxes on the wealthy.

[TheManWithAUsername]

Anonymous wrote:Obviously I meant you get taxed on the return. You love to assume others are rock dumb.

Then how would you be getting taxed twice? You'd only be getting taxed on the return; that would be the first time that money crossed your hands, therefore the first time you'd be taxed on it.

Before, it seemed that you had overlooked something; now you do seem kinda dumb.

[TheManWithAUsername]

Anonymous wrote:As long as Romney followed our tax laws when he earned the money the first time and on the investment income on that money it is a non-issue. You may not like the laws as written, and paying the rate required by law is not a crime. The media just wants to make it one.

It's certainly no a crime, but it may be embarrassing - he certainly seems to think so.

FWIW, I don't have any problem with him exploiting the tax code as much as possible, so I don't think it should be considered shameful. What's shameful is his support for policies that create this kind maldistribution of wealth.

[Anonymous]

slick mitt

[Anonymous]

Ever time I see or hear Mitt, I ask why am I paying a higher % of my earnings in taxes then he is and how the Republican tax talk is bull shit.

[takoma]

Anonymous wrote:Ever time I see or hear Mitt, I ask why am I paying a higher % of my earnings in taxes then he is and how the Republican tax talk is bull shit.

I assume that's a rhetorical question you are asking yourself, since the answer is obvious: People like you and me pay a higher percentage because we can't afford to buy Congress.

[Anonymous]

"FWIW, I don't have any problem with him exploiting the tax code as much as possible, so I don't think it should be considered shameful. What's shameful is his support for policies that create this kind maldistribution of wealth. "

+1 The law's the law. No one sane over pays taxes. The crime is that we allow the rate to be that low - it wasn't always and we were doing better back then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whether investment income should be taxed at a higher or lower rate than 15% and whether it should be taxed at a higher or lower rate than non-investment income should not turn on the small percentage of extremely wealthy people in the country. He's rich and now makes most of his money by investment. I already know that. I can guess that a lot of his income is taxed at 15% now. He follows the tax laws, I have no doubt, he's smart enough to do that.

So, again, I don't care one whit if his personal rate is at or slightly below 15%. Good policy for the country on these questions doesn't turn on what he makes.

The justification of low capital gains and dividend taxes is that it increases investment. I am skeptical that we are getting much for that. Very little of the capital gains and almost none of the dividends are from new stock issues, so very little represents new cash invested into a company. I think it mostly inflates stock prices because it increases the expected after-tax value of the investment.