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Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax. Wrong!
There was a recent article that has been making the rounds stating that 53% of Americans "escape" the income tax.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1
Unfortunately, the article is wrong and deceptive. The social security tax is an income tax that all laborers pay. Conservatives and some libertarians respond to this by saying that these people will get back money when they retire. Even if this were true, and it's not for black men who have a life span averaging 65, the money for the SS benefits come from future taxpayers. As everyone on this board knows, there is no trust fund. Social Security is just a welfare program. There is also another tax on income that almost nobody mentions. The inflation tax. The decrease in the purchasing power of the dollar is every bit an income tax as any other. In fact, it is worse because it is hidden. On top of that, as Murray Rothbard and the other great Austrian economists pointed out, it is a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the politically connected rich.
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Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it
Learned Hand
In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas Szasz
Relinquish liberty for the purposes of defense in an emergency?
Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs
his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness,
liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford
to be without it—least of all during an emergency.
F.A. Harper
You make very good points, Lysander, but one must note that the so-called "Earned Income tax Credit" hands back the Social Security and Medicare taxes (payroll taxes) taken from many people, so, in fact, overall, they have money taken, but then more is given to them through the EITC. The same applies to the "unemployment insurance" funds taken from many people. The Congress simply hands out more and more, long after the money taken has been repaid to many workers.
Of course, we haven't even included sales taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and tariffs imposed by the feds, but it's a safe bet that there really IS a large portion of the population out there that is comprised of net parasites off of the productive endeavors of others, facilitated by holier-than-thou politicians who count on the recipients of the booty to keep voting them into office.
I tell ye, buddy. The more I have to look at the way this system is going, the more frustrated I become! UGH! ;-)
Don't forget regulation. That is also a hidden tax. Agreed about the EITC. I did overlook that. But I don't know if that offsets all of the other taxes. I think many conservatives like to harp on this topic because it promotes the myth that "the poor" are getting so much from the government. In my mind, they are getting ripped off the most. It's very difficult to disaggregate this class of people or that class of people in order to determine who the net taxpayers and net tax recipients are.
Earned Income Tax Credit Amounts for Year 2009
The maximum earned income credit for 2009 is:
To be eligible for EIC, both earned income and adjusted gross income (AGI) must each be less than the following amounts:
My greater point was to emphasize that getting out from paying income taxes does not extricate someone from paying other kinds of taxes.