People earning more than $1 million a year would be subject to a higher tax rate under a bill to be introduced Wednesday by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
Her proposed “Fairness in Taxation Act” would enact new brackets for income starting at $1 million. Schakowky’s office said details, including the proposed rate, would be released at a press conference Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Her office said that she’d be accompanied by, among others, a Pennsylvania millionaire who supports the legislation. Others scheduled to attend include Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).
Critics of higher tax rates say that the wealthy pay a disproportionate share of the individual income taxes collected by the Internal Revenue Service. They also argue that a shaky economy is no time to hike taxes on anyone.
“The current top tax bracket begins at $373,000 in income and fails to distinguish between the ‘well off’ and billionaires,” Schakowsky said in a statement. “The top 20 hedge fund managers, whose average income last year was over $1 billion, paid the same income tax rate as those making several hundred thousand dollars a year.”
byerak@tribune.com
I will never understand how in the world the GOP has convinced the common everyday worker bee, that increasing the taxes on the higher income brackets is wrong. No where else in the world could they have made that kind of money. Thank you USA for providing everything they need to make a fortune, now please help us pay for it.
Lots of hate, ignorance, and strawman arguments on display here. No wonder our country is headed for the trash heap.
Hey slide, Why is it that the slackers and dropouts that thought it more important to goof off in class than study deserve anything? I don’t recall the kids that left high school to work for a nice set of wheels offering to pay my way through university. I don’t recall them subsidizing the rent on my studio apartment for eight years while I paid back my student loans. Where were the losers while I put in 60 to 70 hour work weeks? They were sitting in bars or whining to this idiot Jan about how unfair it is that someone that can’t make change gets paid less than a CEO.
You seem to have less of a clue than this north shore criminal.
HANS, not everyone who is not rich is a slacker or uneducated. I have three college degrees and worked in the private sector for 20 years and never made more than 45k until they kicked me out because they did not want to pay my “HUGE” salary. Quite frankly, most who made money got really REALLY lucky, and my husband who has a nice 6 figure salary is the first one to admit, he got lucky and was in the right place at the right time. I am so sick and tired of people like you claiming we did not work hard enough, because that is simply not true. I know many hard workers who do not make enough to feed their families, and that includes people with a college education as well. So, who does not have a clue now?
Whatever happens to this country where people are rewarded for their hard work? If you work hard and earn your money fair and square, Schokowsky thinks that she should have a cut of your hard-earned money? Schkowsky won’t stop until everybody becomes poor. Vote her out!
John M,
Your logic is flawed in this sentence: “So we are going to have to raise taxes if we ever want to get out of debt.”
Everyone that I know understands our current situation. We all agree that the US government is running on an unsustainable platform and we all agrees that more taxes WITHOUT A REDUCTION IN SPENDING doesn’t solve the problem. Raising taxes AND reducing spending is the solution.
But Congress must act first, making a good faith effort to leave personal agendas, pet projects and eamarks at the door. The Debt Reduction Commission pointed out areas that could be / need to be scaled back. Jan vehemently refused to support the Commission’s recommendations, yet proposed a raise in taxes. Why?
If you have a relative that cannot handle their money, and they keep hitting you up for more money every time they’ve a “crisis” of their own making, do you keep giving them money, thereby placing yourself into greater risk? Or do you use tough love and say “no, not this time”?
Yes, America needs to get out of debt. But first it MUST address the fundamental flaws in the budgetary and spending process. Once the flaws are fixed, then the government can come back to us to ask for additional funding. That’s when we can start the debate on taxation.
Why do we have brackets at all? Why not a tax that is a function of income on a continuous basis with a slope or varying slope that varies according to a formula that may change according to the condition of the economy as determined by reference to any number of indicators? Each next dollar would be taxed at an ever so slightly higher rate. Is a tiny bit of math such a hard sell? My Daddy always used to say that trouble never comes but where there are discontinuities in a system.
“Whatever happens to this country where people are rewarded for their hard work? If you work hard and earn your money fair and square”
Exactly! I mean, who keeps a company profitable, the dozens of workers or one guy in a suit? Yep, the workers, those who actually work hard! I like what Henry Ford said, “we prefer to make twenty thousand men prosperous instead of following the plan of making a few slave drivers in our enterprise multi-millionaires.” That is rewarding people for hard work!
“If you have a relative that cannot handle their money, and they keep hitting you up for more money every time they’ve a “crisis” of their own making, do you keep giving them money, thereby placing yourself into greater risk? Or do you use tough love and say “no, not this time”?”
Precisely! The government needs to say, “Sorry, big oil companies, you’re going to have to get along without the subsidies!” Then when big corporations come knocking, they gotta turn them away too, “Sorry, guys, no more special favors… as a matter of fact, lets start easing up all the previous favors till you can stand on your own, without extra support.” and when banks or wall street come knocking, “sorry, if you can’t make it on your own now, you are going to have to fail. No more bailouts.”
The government cut taxes and financed 2 wars over budget for 10 years. It was wrong then and it is wrong now; Business 101.
The wealthy should be taxed at a higher rate. Why? The military is there to support their wealth; the infrastructure of this country is there to move their goods and services; the subsidies (corporate welfare) are there to support their industries.
Hans, you have got to be kidding. For every 1 hard working honest millionaire there are 2 that got there via pure greed and delusional lies (an off the backs of the other 90%). The stock market is nothing but a gambling arena. That is how this country got into the depression we are in today. So, yes, the wealthy should pay their “fair share.” Otherwise, we can all go down the tubes together.
I have made a few bucks in my life and paid my fair share of taxes at the higher brackets 11 years ago – working 60-70 hours. I never asked for a “cut” – I didn’t need one, and I was furious about the Bush cuts. Well 10 years later look where we are.
I swear, for many, the more money a person makes the greedier and more selfish they become. The reality, most wealth is created off of the “losers” who barely make a living wage. So quit whining, pay your taxes, and be happy you still have your wealth. You can’t just stick your money in your casket and take it with you.
Lets see, the President (forget about political party affiliations here), is the leader of the free world. Makes about $400K a year. So why should someone who is an employee of any publicly held company (and I would make exceptions for messrs gates, jobs, etc who built the companies themselves) make more than that?
So…. I say if anyone make more than the POTUS from their employer (in pay, stock, perks like private jet or housing allowance, etc), income tax rate s/b 40%, plus 5% going to FICA, 5% going to Medicare, no deductions allowed. Every year you make more than 400K, you add a 1 year to you SS eligibility per multiple of 400K. So someone making 1.2M in one year gets 3 years added to their SS eligbility dates.
Those who pontificate about how the rich earn everything they have conveniently ignore the fact that children of billionaires are born into enormous advantages relative to children of those in poverty. These advantages include nutrition, ed…ucation, “networking,” etc. Children of the rich earn nothing before they are born.
It is also sheer idiocy to pretend that the US has a “free market” economy. When big bankers can run to the nanny state to plead successfully for trillions of dollars in breast milk to avoid going belly-up (all the while clutching their copies of Hayak and Friedman), there is no “free market.” (See http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/01/news/economy/fed_reserve_data_release/index.htm)
The enormous US military budget (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)is a taxpayer gift to defense contractors and many other US corporations, who reap immense profits and lobby Congress incessantly to ensure that there’s no reduction in the Pentagon’s weapons purchases and hence in their profits. The US does not need to spend as much as the rest of the world combined on its military to defend its population, anymore than any other state in history needed such a large military relative to the rest of the world for “security” and “defense.”
(After all, since the rest of the world is weaponless by comparison, whom are we defending ourselves against?).
Corporations benefit from government action in many other ways. The government signs “trade deals” with other countries that allow American corporations to move across borders as they please in search of the lowest wages to pay workers. However, the American borders remain tightly closed to those same workers, who lack the same freedom of movement in the search for higher wages. Hence, government action is used to set workers in competition with each other internationally (corporations give jobs to those who will work for the lowest wages), while prohibiting workers from hiring themselves out to the corporations which pay the highest wages (and hence, preventing workers from making corporations compete for their labor).
Aristotle said that the central question of politics is, “How shall we organize our lives together?”
Similarly, the central question of economic policy ought to be, “How shall we allocate the resources of our shared planet together?”
Allowing some people to have enormous fortunes and to use the government to augment those fortunes further while many other people starve or lack adequate health care is not the best way.
Huh, you are an idiot.
Do you understand incentives?
Do you understand how markets work?
The people making over $400k are already paying the lion’s share of the taxes in this country – you’re a socialist!
The role of government must be reduced as much as possible as soon as possible.
The social contract says nothing about free school, free food or free lodging.
If you wanna get mad at someone, get mad at those that are leaching off the economy.
Cheers,
Dearborn
I like the proposal of a continuous change in the progressive tax rate. And the need for it is never been greater. Technology and free trade have made getting lucky (it’s not just that, it’s work, no doubt…and I ought to know) even more remunerative than ever before. But if we are going to be a country, opposed to a group of individuals that happen to live near each other, we need to consider some changes. As all of us poker game player know, when the chips all go to one end of the table, the game ends. And that tends to be messy. Just ask Mr. Mubarak of Egypt.
Oh my gosh!
What are the millionaires and billionaires going to do?
How will they ever survive this?
Hedge Fund billionaires already pay 15% in taxes, and we expect them to pay more for there hard earned money?
Oh the humanity!