Memo To CNBC: No, The Rich Don't Already Pay Super High Tax Rates

[unhappycamper]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/buffett-rule-tax-rates_n_2199832.html?utm_hp_ref=business




Memo To CNBC: No, The Rich Don't Already Pay Super High Tax Rates
The Huffington Post
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 11/28/2012 10:47 am EST Updated: 11/28/2012 10:47 am EST

The rich are getting a little tired of Warren Buffett constantly wanting to raise their taxes and suggest the real tax slackers are further down the income scale. Shockingly, that's not quite the truth.

The Oracle of Omaha, America's cuddliest billionaire, took to the New York Times recently to demand that he have his income taxed at a higher rate. His idea, dubbed the "Buffett Rule," is to have income of between $1 million and $10 million taxed at a 30 percent rate and everything over that taxed at 35 percent. This isn't the first time he has asked for higher taxes. He has asked for higher taxes so many times that other rich people are starting to worry about him.

The typical rich-person's retort to Buffett is that his cockamamie idea is only going to bring in chump change, about $47 billion in 10 years, according to one independent estimate. Hardly worth launching a Class War over. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein pointed out a while back, this is a bogus argument because, hey, every little bit helps, and the Obama administration has packaged the Buffett Rule with other measures to raise more revenue. And also the Buffett Rule might actually raise more like $160 billion, which is almost real money.

Anyway, CNBC's wealth reporter, Robert Frank, has offered what at first glance seems to be a more serious, numbers-based retort to the Buffett Rule: It's hard to see what the Buffett Rule accomplishes because rich people already pay much, much higher income tax rates than the middles and the poors. And he even has IRS data to prove it: In 2010, for example, people with income of $10 million or more paid an income tax rate of 20.7 percent, compared with just 3.8 percent for people with incomes of $30,000 to $50,000 and 4.7 percent for incomes of $50,000 to $100,000. Come on, middles, pull your damn weight already. And don't even get us started on the lower incomes, who paid next to nothing in federal income taxes.

[Fuddnik]

1. Point out to people that their payroll tax rate alone is higher than ....

Poster boy, Mitt Romney's entire effective tax rate.