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USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

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Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#301

Post by JoBrad »

code_duck wrote: post #119
killjoywashere wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stories of doctors prescribing food to malnourished children and Medicaid refusing to pay, saying "Food is not medicine."

That makes sense to me since there are other programs which exist specifically to provide food assistance.

Depending on the age of the child, those programs may only provide food for a certain amount of time, over the lifetime of the adult applying for the benefits.

Or, if the adult has any property that increases their net worth over a certain amount, then they can't get the benefit at all.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#302

Post by tptacek »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #297
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that we could eliminate a lot of that overhead if we stopped pretending that Social Security is insurance and just gave every retiree the same benefit. You would still need to keep track of who has reached retirement age, who has died, and where to send the checks, but you could get rid of a lot of arcane rules.

I guess the question is: how much would you save by firing 50k people, and how much would it cost you in claims getting awarded to people without real need?

Firing fifty thousand Social Security Administration employees would likely require the SSA to be the most efficient benefits management organization in the world. 70,000 employees sounds like a lot, but, again: it's roughly in line with comparable commercial organizations.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#303

Post by Pokepokalypse »

genericpseudo wrote: post #238
abeyer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just to put things in simple terms, this $200B does not include money Apple made by selling iPhones in the US, right? It only includes money Apple made by selling iPhones in other countries? I don't get why we obsess so much over it. US economy is large enough. If they want to bring this money back to the US or they want to give money to their owners/stock holders, they can pay the tax at that time? I don't have a…

> As an American citizen, I'm still subject to federal income tax, even on income earned while I'm residing outside the country, for work done entirely outside the country, for a non-American employer. This is a really unusual part of the US tax code.

yes. It is very strange that the anti-tax zealots have focussed on this one weird issue, when 99% of them will never, and probably COULD never be affected by it.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#304

Post by vacri »

amscanne wrote: post #202
shmageggy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Feder…

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

> Consider the following: 10 people earn $10 and pay $1 in tax. 10 people earn $20 and pay $5 tax.

This is way out of proportion to real-life values, and the semantics of this equation change quite a bit with even minor changes.

For example, after your high-earner tax hike, the low earners are left with $9 and the high earners are left with $12. This is absurdist nonsense that does not match up with what happens in the real world. A person on $40k and a person on $80k have vastly different spending capacity after tax.

A person on $80k (~66k after tax) doesn't pay eight times the absolute amount of tax the $40k (~36k after tax) person does, and they retain their approximately two-times spending capacity.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#305

Post by Pokepokalypse »

awj wrote: post #293
amscanne wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

> Say 4 of the high earners stop working as much (since their marginal rates are so high). I have literally never once heard or even heard of someone deciding to work less because they don't want to pay as much in taxes.

Only if they have another income source. For example: my ex said that she wanted to go down to part time work (to reduce our tax liability). I suggested maybe I should go down to part-time instead, since that would reduce our income more. (hell, I'd actually like to go down to FULL time. . . . ).

Anyway, she didn't like the sound of THAT idea. One of the many reasons she is my ex.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#306

Post by twoodfin »

Spooky23 wrote: post #292
Cshelton wrote: post #106

I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of what the media on both sides are perpetuating. That is my first takeaway at a glance. My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. It's been said over and over, and the aggregation of more data into charts comes to the same conclus…

Social Security is perpetually misunderstood. It's working as designed. Those surpluses that you're looking for were essentially just dumped on the federal balance sheet as non-marketable debt and spent on stuff like building aircraft carriers. The "deficit" means that it's time to pay back those IOUs. It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation. Flat tax is…

It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation.

It's already indexed to wage growth rates, and there's nothing "easy" (or at least, shouldn't be) about a 12.4% marginal tax rate hike.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#307

Post by djrogers »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #300
shmageggy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Feder…

In practice; we currently have a very UN-progressive system. Where the very wealthy get excessive tax breaks, and pay even less than the middle and upper-middle class (who are getting fucking murdered: at least that's my experience). Would a flat-tax fix this? In theory: but if we set that "flat tax" to 15-17%; (and simply pocket the cost savings from simplification of tax code) - that seems like a win. But the very…

> taking their personal Truck as a deduction, by calling it a "work truck"

That's simply tax fraud, it's completely different from the other examples you're calling out..

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#308

Post by djrogers »

extra88 wrote: post #226
amscanne wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

In scenario 1, government collects $60 from $300 earned (20%). In scenario 2, government collects $62 from $260 earned (~24%). In scenario 2, government has higher revenue, not lower. If high earners had to exert themselves twice as much or otherwise expend twice the resources to earn $20 instead of $10, maybe ending up with $9 instead of $12 would be rational. Of course in the real world it rarely works that way, on…

Except in scenario 1 the person earning $300 has $40 extra to spend or invest somewhere which is good for the economy. Eventually someone else will wind up paying $8 tax on that $40 (20%)...

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#309

Post by QuarterReptile »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #300
shmageggy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Feder…

In practice; we currently have a very UN-progressive system. Where the very wealthy get excessive tax breaks, and pay even less than the middle and upper-middle class (who are getting fucking murdered: at least that's my experience). Would a flat-tax fix this? In theory: but if we set that "flat tax" to 15-17%; (and simply pocket the cost savings from simplification of tax code) - that seems like a win. But the very…

While most of what you said is spot on, people often misunderstand what constitutes the super rich group with big tax breaks. It's way less than one percent, because it's the big investment money that's getting out of so much taxation. People who earn high salaries are actually paying quite substantial taxes.

For some perspective, "the 1%" starts at about $350k annual salary (think middle-of-the-pack surgeon.) At that level, you're paying a lot of taxes.

There's an excellent recent Econtalk on taxation in the US.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#310

Post by twoodfin »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #181
xienze wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple things... The parent is talking about "progressive" as in "the tax gets progressively higher as you make more money", not in the "social justice" sense. The flat tax being regressive means that the poor would have to actually pay more in taxes than they do now, which is very little. That's seen as a bad thing. Obviously there are solutions to that in flat tax proposals. Second, "the wealthy pay very little t…

> Those making $250K and up are responsible for 51.6% of all income tax revenue. How much more should they be expected to contribute? And this is what is so annoying about groups complaints about the wealthy paying taxes. The heavy reliance on misleading statistics. The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income? An entire article that n…

The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income?

Probably not. Some quick Googling finds this analysis:

http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-in...

It uses different split points, but claims that the top 5% of earners make about 35% of the total AGI, but pay 59% of gross income taxes.

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