But no one is asking Joe the doctor to pay most of his earnings to taxes. And the tax rate is not 50%! It caps at 35%. I have a client, a single lady who has on her tax return about 400k of dividend income. Because of how the law is written for qualified dividends, she only pays 15%, some years less on those dividends. With her deductions, she paid a little over 40k in federal taxes. All her long term capital gains are also taxes at 15% instead of 28% where they used to be. My family, with both my husband and I working, making a decent living, but with kids and 1 of them in college, housing and real estate tax deductions, well, we paid almost as much as she did in Federal income taxes. And we were barely able to afford a vacation this summer.
How is that fair? This woman has INCOME, all investment income of almost half a million dollars.Oh and the funny thing, we give away more in charity than she did also. And when she was paying more, before the cuts in these rates, she gave the same amount to charity, making those rates low did not make her give more away.
With income tax, what they are proposing is more equitable. They are proposing to increase that top rate to 39.6? or something, increase capital gains to 20% and put those damn qualified dividends back where they belong at ordinary income. I should not be paying the same amount of taxes as someone who has that much income, all of it investment. YOu would itnk with all the deductions a working family owning a home would get that it would be much less. I don't have enough money to invest and therefore create a portfolio so I can earn all those dividends.
And yes this is one case, but this is pretty much status quo with my clients, and I've worked at different type firms, but the rich do get better tax breaks than middle class, and you will never convince me that that is fair. No one is asking for the rich to give away all their money.
One more thing, which I don't think is targeted to change, but I always wondered, and if changed this would affect us, but why does Social security cap and after a 110k (for 2012) you don't pay on any additional income. No, 110k is not rich, but it just doesn't make any sense. Really, with the underfunding of SS, I think every dollar should be taxed. It just makes no sense.
Wow, wow & wow!
I don't understand this mentality at all. They "owe" it bc America gave them the opportunity to make that kind of money? America gave everyone the same opportunity, why should they be punished for that?
- If Joe graduates high school, is self driven and wants to be a doctor, spends 8-12 years of his life in college and training, makes $400,000 a year, I think he deserves it!! Kudos to him.
-If Bob graduates high school and eh...just doesn't feel like opening another book, gets a job at McDonalds making minimum wage or at the local gymnastics club coaching for $10 an hour, that is fine, America needs those people, my husband and I employee those people, but why in the world would Bob think Joe should give most of his earnings?!?!? Joe worked HARD!!!
-Everyone has that same opportunity to be successful, it's easier for some than others. I most certainly didn't have parents that gave me a blank check & sent me off to college. I was a full time student, worked a full time job, & paid my entire way through school. I didn't think I would ever get my student loans paid off. I most certainly took advantage of the land of opportunity though.
- If I had a dear friend named Jill that was a plastic surgeon and we had girls night out every Sat. night I would not show up to dinner with the mentality....well, she's rich...surely she will pay this dinner bill. Chances are that she would insist on doing that occasionally, but I most certainly would not EXPECT it.