Omnibus GOP Primary ThreadFollow

Soon as you start to understand it, let me know

I was completely able to understand Joph's points. gbaji's paragraphs, not so much.

I noticed it some time ago, but I wanted to see how it would turn out.

Gbaji is right. He made the claim that the 17% was on his total income, not taxable income. Now you can try argue that this claim is irrelevant or that it is misleading, but it is correct.

Ah. Finally found the article I was looking for.

While the figures for income tax alone are a couple years old, it's unlikely that the average distributions have changed much:



That's why just looking at taxable income isn't very useful. Because the method by which taxes are reduced is by deductions to that taxable income itself. And the averages show that most people deduct significant amounts and therefore pay at rates far lower than can be easily correlated to the taxable income Joph was attempting to use. More to the point, it's pretty unfair to suggest that the relative amount of taxes Romney pays is somehow equated to someone making under $40k. As this data shows, he paid double the income tax rate of the average person earning $100-$125k. Those aren't poor people (and apparently, I'm not taking nearly enough deductions).

Even if we add payroll taxes back in (and ignore the whole holiday reduction thing), the numbers still don't look anything like Joph was trying to imply:





Again though, the larger point is being lost here. Romney presumably earns most of his money via capital gains. I'm sure he does have income in the form of book sales, paid speeches, and whatnot, but it's probably a smallish portion of his total yearly earnings. And depending on what he's doing with the money (like giving more to charity than he earned in book sales), it's not unreasonable to see that 15% figure. We could have a larger debate about tax deductions and whatnot, but the kinds of comparisons Joph was making are not only inaccurate, but they are misleading and unfair *and* serve only to perpetuate false assumptions within this topic rather than provide any sort of information to anyone.


The fact is that the wealthy on average *do* pay a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes. So the Buffet rule is meaningless bluster. It's making a rule for something that doesn't happen purely in order to make people think that it's needed or relevant. And that's before even considering that we're looking at two different forms of earnings which are supposed to have completely different tax rates. If you want to compare tax rates, you really need to separate regular income from capital gains first, then separate taxes on that regular income from that paid on the capital gains. Then you can look at the percentages. Muddling them together and trying to compare the result to someone else's earnings is not going to allow you to make any sort of intelligent analysis.


Might give you good rhetoric though! Which is why it's done.

Edited, Jan 17th 2012 7:41pm by gbaji

Fascinating.


Before the hissy-fit, yes I know that's on total federal taxes and not purely income tax.

Edited, Jan 17th 2012 9:46pm by Jophiel

Not at all. That's a relevant number to throw out. However, I doubt comparing Romney's tax rate to someone in the $50-$75k range would have had the same value to you as comparing it to someone making $38.7k. And for the record, I have absolutely no problem with you or anyone else making that comparison (assuming that Romney's 15% figure also includes payroll taxes, of course). My issue was with the misleadingly low number you tossed out initially.


And, as I've stated repeatedly, that still does not address the whole "income vs capital gains" issue. We've gotten past your initially inaccurate statement about income taxes and are only just now arriving at the larger incorrectness of comparing capital gains taxes to income taxes in the first place.

He had his initial numbers wrong when he attempted to lecture me about how taxes worked. Actually, he had them wrong twice; once in getting the marginal tax rate incorrect and once again in not understanding what numbers I was using.

Edited, Jan 17th 2012 9:57pm by Jophiel

Not clear enough for anyone Joph. No one uses taxable income when comparing relative incomes and tax rates. Here's a Huffpost article going over the Obama's taxes. I'll point out that in two different parts of the article they equate that to a percentage ("about a quarter" and "26%"). In both cases they are comparing it to the total unadjusted income. Heck. Midway through the article, they list the taxable income number. But they don't ever attempt to say that he paid X% in taxes by using that number.


Even Huffington Post, a liberal rag with all the incentive in the world to exaggerate the willingness of the Obama's to pay a high tax rate on their well earned income was honest enough to realize that this wasn't the correct way to express it.


No one talks about the relative amount of taxes someone paid and uses only taxable income. When people complain about corporations making billions of dollars and paying zero in taxes, do you think they're talking about taxable income when they list off how much the corporation made? No, they're not.


Why you choose to use that, I don't know. But you really can't blame me for assuming you were talking about total income and not taxable income.

He was incorrect there and then admitted to it.

He chose not to use taxable income, this was not a failure to understand the numbers you were using. You failed to understand that he was making an argument based on total income.

This isn't a huge deal, but I'm a stickler when it comes to statements that are categorically correct or categorically false. Gbaji was correct in his statement about 17% of his total income of 100k, and you were wrong for asserting that he wasn't.

Edited, Jan 17th 2012 10:56pm by Allegory

That word has no business in this thread.

I'll just leave this here.

Whisper Mill: Romney is hesitant to release his taxes partially because of millions donated to the Mormon church.

Stop your crazy talk! If tax rate goes up on the rich, they will stop being job creators. And if the low-middle class folk want more disposable income, they will get 2nd and 3rd jobs. Us poor folks should be happy with what we get and be thankful our betters let us work at all.