Frank Boettcher wrote:
On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:45:06 -0400, jeff wrote:

As for property taxes, remember that the very wealthy pay much less than
the middle class.

Must be different in your part of the country. In mine, property
taxes are based on the value of the property and the lower the value
the higher the impact of homestead exemption. Has nothing to do with
the income or wealth of the owner.

It turns out that the very wealthy put less of their wealth into their
property. As a national average, the top 1% pay only 1.4% of their
income on property taxes, compared to about 2.5% for the middle class.

Sales taxes are even worse, where the rich pay only
about a quarter of what the middle class pays, as a percentage of
income.

Here again in my part of the country it is based on how much you
spend.

No, its based on how much you spend on taxable items. Big difference
there.


Oh I see, percentage of income is in there. What difference does that
make with regard to property and consumption tax?

If you don't do it as a percentage of income, then are you claiming that
everyone should simply pay the same amount?


Just another of those "share the wealth" advocates.

Share the wealth, share the burden. What's the difference? Taxes have
always been assessed according to complex formulas that take into
account ones status or income. And rich assholes have always tried to
avoid paying. Poor assholes can't avoid paying because their taxes are
built into their paycheck, mortgage, or shopping list.



The rich do pay more in local income taxes, but overall, local
taxes tend to be very regressive, with the poorest paying double what
the richest pay.

In total dollars? Oh you must mean as a percentage of income. Hey
let's just become communist and we can get those percentages to even
right out.

Ah! So you are advocating that everyone pays the same amount. So
that's a $3 trillion fed budget divided by 300 million people, or about
$10,000 per person. So, a family of four pays $40,000 regardless of how
much they make. That works out pretty good for the half of the country
that makes under the family average of about $70K. Social Security
average is what, $14K? We'll just send the widows $333 a month and call
it even! Its about the same for military enlistees. Throw in local
taxes and a third of the country has a take home pay of about zero!

On the other end of the scale, the super rich shouldn't have to pay more
than $10K per head, and shouldn't have to pay local taxes because they
have their own schools and security.

And fire departments should only save houses that have paid insurance.

But you say anything else is simply communism!