"The most perennially political issues in the United States is the question of how much Americans should be taxed. Indeed, discounted over taxes was one of the major motivating factors in the revolution that established the United States as an independent nation"("Extending Tax Cuts", 1). Since taxes are one of the biggest topics in politics, there is always going to be two sides of the subject, and Taxes will always strike controversy in our country. The topic of having the rich pay more in tax has a deep history to consider, and there will always be both supporters and critics who continue to debate this topic.
The initial income tax sparked a debate that has raged ever since. "The Government taxed personal income for the first time in 1862,
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Consequently, everyone who makes a living in the United States is expected to contribute a portion of their salary to the federal government in the form of taxes. That money is used to fund the day-to-day operations of the federal government, as well as social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the national defense budget, benefits for retired federal employees and veterans, public education, national infrastructure, including the highway system, and many other aspects of American life ("Taxing Millionaires", 1). The United States requires additional monies to fund all these necessities. If it possessed enough revenue to fund all of these programs, and still have money left, the United States would be one of the most advanced countries, and would rise to an unstoppable economy. If insufficient amounts of money are collected from income tax, schools won't receive the revenue needed to provide programs. As a result, schools would be forced to cut spending, leading to decreased interventions and opportunities needed for each learner. One of the …show more content…
Opponents claim that having the rich pay more in tax is class warfare. For example, former speech writer for former President Richard Nixon, Ben Stein, said on CBS's Sunday Morning, "I am not quite sure what my sin is. I worked for almost every dollar I have." He argues that the wealthy are being punished. "But for what? I don't own any slaves. I employ many people full- and part-time and they are all excited with their pay... what did I do wrong?"("Extending Tax Cuts") Ben Stein reports this as class warfare, Since it requires him to pay additional tax for working hard and earning more money. The bottom 40% of all income earners benefit greatly from the income tax code. "In fact, they actually pay negative income tax rates due to refundable credits, such as the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit wipe out their tax liability and pay out more money to them than they ever paid in. The income tax burden of low-income earners has trended for years"(Dubay). Since low income earners don’t have enough money to spend on their kids, the government gives them money. In some occasions the government gives these families more than they pay in taxes. Those who oppose this say that raising tax rates on the rich damages economic growth, because it reduces the incentives to work, save, invest, and accept economic risk. Raising taxes on the rich hurts workers at all income
But, once the golden days were over in the 1920s and the 1930s set in, the taxes once again had to be raised because of the Great Depression and the need for the government to have many social programs ("Introduction to Tax Reform"). Then in the 1960s the tax for individuals was dropped. But, once again these taxes had to be raised because of inflation in the 1970s. During the years of 1981 and 1986 taxes were both lowered in these years because of good economic standing for the United States. But once again in the 1990s, taxes were once again raised ("Introduction to Tax Reform"). These opposers say that a tax reform will not solve any problems. Another problem with tax reform is all the question marks and controversies of changing the tax code. People believe that certain items and capital should be taxed and certain items should not be taxed. Then there are those people who believe they should or should not have to pay a certain percentage. There is the disagreements in which way the taxes should be use ("Introduction to Tax Reform"). These are the points that the opposers of a tax reform support, but now tax reform changes would be best for the people and businesses of the United States of America.
As it was mentioned before, issues such as the Ebola virus, climate change, the risk of extremists controlling nuclear power, and the Islamic State are relatively matters of concern. However, I believe that economic inequality in the United States is a concern that is underestimated, and ignored by those in power. In order to distribute wealth equally, the rich ought to pay more taxes than those who have a low income. Candidate Bernie Sanders proposed that he plans to stabilize our economy by increasing the taxes on rich people. I understand his proposal is radical and progressive, therefore many individuals will oppose, while some celebrities whose income is above 300,000 dollars agree with Sanders plan and backing him up in his presidential
However, “ According to the Congressional Research Service, the average rate paid by the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers fell from more than 40 percent in the early 1980s to around 25 percent in 2009. Despite that decline, he says, "we haven't seen a significant change in the job creation rate or a significant change in new business creation.". What has been effected is the increase of income polarization in the United States. The lower class continues to receive the same treatment it has been given for decades. Whereas the upper class is given more and more tax cuts saving them money. Money that could be given to support the country that has provided them with the great opportunity to create a thriving business; which is an opportunity that not even some their fellow Americans have. My proposal is to increase the number of tax brackets on higher incomes in order put more money back in to the hands of the working and lower class who provide the fuel for a healthy economy. It is found that by providing more money for the lower classes will help the economy
Almost all Americans pay taxes, but the amount and the type of the paid taxes are very different from a taxpayer to another depending on their incomes. Affluent Americans pay a larger share of their income in individual income taxes, corporate taxes, and estate taxes than lower-income groups. By contrast, lower-income groups owe a greater portion of their earnings for payroll taxes and excise taxes than those groups who are better-off (citation). Although we have discussed whether rich people should pay more taxes for a long time, we need a clear answer of why rich people should not pay more.
Throughout the past couple of decades, countless amounts of people have begun to wonder at which rate the rich should pay more in taxes. It is known to most Americans in society the rich earn more money they worked hard for, but the more you earn, the more taxes you should pay. The top one percent of wealthy American business owners, etc. have learned ways around paying their taxes through loopholes abusing the rights of equality. It 's not a secret that money causes greed and selfishness. The wealthy are less likely to help those who are in need of help. The poor are forced to go through difficulties when it comes to the financial aspect and have to worry when it comes to how their money is spent. This is unlike the rich however, because they 're paying the same amount of money as someone who’s substantially less than 3 them. With a stale economy right now daily living is hard on people that are in middle and lower class.
The tax system of the United States is as complicated as it gets. It is a system that has enough loopholes in which it benefits the wealthy over the less fortunate. The wealthiest people are especially aware of these loopholes so they take advantage of it and determine ways of cheating the system, instead of trying to make it fair for all different types of classes. With these tools to cheat the system, the middle-class and lower-class are more harshly penalized and hounded for their taxes than the wealthy - who get away with a lot more. All of this information and more is discussed in David Cay Johnston’s book Perfectly Legal. Johnston discusses how cheated the tax system really is and how just the lack of political backup can really cause
Taxes are necessary to fund the american government. Taxes help our government fund many different things. Such as paying for the upkeep on many different structures, paying for the protection of our great country, and they paying for a huge variety of programs. Taxes are one way out of many that help keep our country running and well financed.
According to “Christian Science Monitor”, The United States tax system has almost always been progressive, meaning the richer you become, the higher percentage of your income you have to pay to the government (Grier, 2012, p.1). Grier alludes to the government as being politicians to the economy and to the citizens for making them pay taxes no matter what the costs. This is how the American dream has been flawed due to the fact that all citizens must pay a certain percentage of taxes when in reality some do not have the sufficient earnings for them to pay at a high cost. For Instance from “The Wall Street Journal”, the most recent IRS data shows that the top 5% of earners bring in 37% of the income but pay 60% of the federal individual income taxes. The bottom half of earners bring home 12% of the income but pay 3% of the taxes (Brooks, 2010, p. 2). Brooks gives the idea that the citizens from different classes have different percentages of taxation. That does not precisely mean that all citizens pay different amount of taxes. Mostly all must pay the same tax in order for the economy to roll by safely. In the end, The government has overspent for years wich turns to tax increases instead of spending cuts simply for the sake of “fairness” and that is simply
The specific problem the committee cited was taxpayers with high economic income mostly comprised of property or tax exempt investments paying less tax than a taxpayer with lower economic income from wages and salaries. Many tax analysts will argue that the alternative minimum tax targets upper middle class taxpayers. Not only do they fault the structure for not
One of the significant reasons to tax the rich more is because of how much they pay in taxes. Even though the rich are the ones that have the most, they should as well be the ones that give the most.This would easily be assumed but that is not the case. Specifically, information from “Do the Rich Pay Lower Taxes than the Middle Class?” by Robert Frank shows this. As well it gives many examples of how much the rich pay in taxes compared to low-income people. “The poorest 20 percent of Americans paid an average of 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes and the middle 20 percent of Americans paid 9.4 percent. The top 1 percent, meanwhile, pay only 5.4 percent of their income in state and local taxes.” Overall that is a big difference
The rich and business owners already pay far too much in taxes. They already sacrifice too much. They already share their wealth too much. The top 1 percent of income earners (almost all of whom are small business owners) already pay 40 percent of the personal income taxes in America, more than the bottom 95 percent combined.
Since the birth of our nation, there has been fierce debate between fiscal conservatives and liberals on how we should tax our people. Conservatives say that we should tax the rich less, where liberals say we should tax the rich more. Raising taxes on the rich is beneficial to the majority of the American populace. Taxing the rich more and the poor less would increase the velocity of money in the economy. The super-rich should pay more to maintain and improve the system they utilized to become rich. We need to retool the new generation of workers for the world and that required more capital. The richest 1% of people in the country own more than the bottom 90% so they should be completely fine with a higher tax rate.
Political parties almost never agree on what the United States tax structure should be. This makes sense since how much is paid in taxes ultimately determines where citizens can afford to live, what clothes they can buy, vacations they can pay for, and how much money they can invest for their future needs. The definition of tax is “a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of goods services, or transactions”. In our country, it seems that one of the most talked about presidential campaign issues was what the tax code will be. Therefore, it is timely to sum up what President Obama’s contribution to this complicated issue has been and how that may have affected the American economy. The clarification of four major candidates’ tax proposals will be described in order to show how different
The history of taxes can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, where scribes were used by Egyptian Pharaohs as tax on cooking oil to make sure appropriate amounts of cooking oil were consumed. In Rome there were custom duties on imports and exports named portoria. Slaves had 4% sales tax and 1% for everyone else. Colonists were paying taxes under the Molasses Act which was modified in 1764 to include import on foreign molasses, sugar, wine, and other commodities. Settlers in 1794 started what was called the “Whiskey Rebellion” and rioted against the tax collectors. When the 16th Amendment was passed it allowed Congress to tax the citizenry or income from whatever source derived. Taxes are one of the biggest issues the world has, but the way taxes are collected is an even bigger problem. Everything you buy includes a sales tax that increases the price of something when you buy it. Taxes can be the difference between having just enough to buy something and not being able to buy it at all. People work their hardest all week to receive a paycheck where money they deserve is deducted from
Our wealthy pay the highest taxes in the world. If they leave, then we will lose 58 percent share of taxes, 80 percent of charitable contributions and the majority of jobs. They are leaving. The Census Bureau reported that departures of top earners, used as scapegoats for the failings of government, doubled this year to 154 a week (74 in 2011). As Obama’s attack escalates, departures escalate. Soon, tax burdens must fall on the middle class. Europe’s decline began the same way.” The minimal amount of good raising the taxes of the wealthy would do doesn’t seem worth the risk of them moving to places with a lower tax rate. There are many arguments to be had on both sides of this debate. The poor and middle class aren’t given the chances the rich are because the schools are better in rich neighborhoods then in poor neighborhoods, poor and middle class can’t afford college (which is false because financial aid makes it possible for everyone now), and the rich have the money so why not tax them more? The rich say they earned their money so why should they be responsible for bailing out America and not all Americans including the ones who make less, and why is success a measure of how much you should be taxed? Neither side is right and neither side is wrong and it comes down to a personal preference. This is where Obama was smart because most of America who are middle class won’t think like me and my mom and do believe the rich