Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Umm, bonuses are only initially taxed at a lower tax rate, which is 25%, not 15%. At the end of the year, an individual's net income is taxed, and the bonus would then be taxed at the same rate as the rest of the income. I'll say this as nicely as I can, but your statement above about taxed bonuses is false.
As far as your claim about highly paid CEO's not paying the listed tax rates, I'd like to see your proof for such a claim. Many of those returns are matters of public record, so please let me know which CEO's you believe aren't paying the correct tax rate.
Now, there are no "loopholes" for CEO's of the industries you described. There are no person-specific loopholes at all. There are no exemptions for "Wall Street bonuses", and I have no idea what a "offshore clause" would be that would eliminate a tax burden. There's simply no such animal in my experience.
I understand your theory about short term gains, and I don't disagree with it, but there's a point where the system can't penalize for those sorts of gains (or reward the losses).
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One proof that was very publicly visible is Warren Buffet's tax filing for a claimed income of fifty million dollars back in 2007 or so when he testified to the senate for repealing Bush tax cuts, if my recollection serves me well I think it was 14% and he made note of further tax shelters he could have made use of that would reduce his tax burden down to 7%, which he chose not to exercise.
I'm not sure how an interested person or group would access broad base information such as what the tax bite is on say 100 people making over 50 million a year. Warren Buffet, and I'm not sure how he accesses this information, claims it's at about 7% to 14%.
I had personal finances between my wife and I where our incomes easily exceeded $200k a year, between a house payment, her veterinary clinic being in a second house on the property, leased cars for business purposes, medical equipment purchase/leases, etc. we have never until this last year paid over $12k in taxes for a year, usually it was $6,000 to $8,000. I know working class people that pay that, they just aren't aware of it because it comes out of their paychecks.
You are using the "prove it" argument as a rebuttal. Talk to any tax accountant or attorney handling an array of wealthier people's finances and you won't see anyone paying anywhere near the listed tax amount, it just isn't happening. The only two persons I have ever known that got hammered for more was a woman whose husband died at an unexpected working age which left millions of dollars in full valued stock to get hammered at a time when it's price was depressed and all of it had to be sold to satisfy an exaggerated price, and my cousin who was worth $60 million overnight when the company he was head engineer of (Ciara) sold to Redback for $4.5 billion.
He got brutalized by the government with taxes. All he could do was try to do was scramble to shelter the liquid remainder he had left after the initial taxes. That's where municipal bonds and such came in for him.
Just out of curiousity are you supportive of a GOP opposition to taxes in general, and of the opinion that "raising taxes" (which isn't raising them at all, it's putting them back to where they were before they got a Bush exemption), will hurt the economy? The only thing raising taxes will curtail is the rising deficit and debt.