OMG! It's the Fiscal Cliff!

[classicman]

1) There are only 824,584 tax filers making over $500,000 a year.
2) There are only 2,761,934 tax filers making over 250,000 a year.
Combined that's about 3.5 million taxpayers.
There is NO WAY we can solve anything by addressing only this group of "rich" people.

3) 142,892,051 - Total number of tax returns filed 2010.
Only 84,475,933 - Total number of TAXABLE returns.
Thats is under 60%. Conclusion - Its simple math. The tax revenue base must be broadened. There is no other way.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by classicman

1) There are only 824,584 tax filers making over $500,000 a year.
2) There are only 2,761,934 tax filers making over 250,000 a year.
Combined that's about 3.5 million taxpayers.
There is NO WAY we can solve anything by addressing only this group of "rich" people.

3) 142,892,051 - Total number of tax returns filed 2010.
Only 84,475,933 - Total number of TAXABLE returns.
Thats is under 60%. Conclusion - Its simple math. The tax revenue base must be broadened. There is no other way.

So what, just leave them paying at the current rate and just increase the burden on everybody earning below that amount?

Just because they cannot be the only solution doesn;t mean they shouldn't be a part of the overall solution. Redressing an imbalance is all that's being asked for.

The wealthy in America pay proportionately less tax than they have ever done. As a group, the highest earners have increased their share of the wealth as well as their wealth in real terms during a period which has seen everybody else's wealth stagnate. They have been the biggest beneficiaries of the financial meltdown and they have continued to reap benefits from the whirlwind that has swept so many of their countrymen to personal ruin.

As a class, the 'job creators' have changed the employment landscape to suit themselves at the cost of millions of lost / outsourced jobs and insecure employment at home.

The people scratching around in the fucking dust, desperate for work and living in temporary accomodation did not create the current economic crisis, they shouldn't be the ones who have to pay for it through the loss of yet more services and assistance and the creeping rise of less direct taxes, whilst the super rich squirrel away their ever-increasing piles of cash into off-shore tax havens, because they're too fucking selfish even to pay the minimal levels of tax currently expected of them.