chenr@tilt.UUCP (Raymond Chen ) (04/11/84)
<fix this please, I'm getting tired of typing this line>
Before you go jumping to any conclusions about the rich, PLEASE find
out how much of their income is gets thrown out due to the "adjusted"
in adjusted gross income. Conclusions drawn from fancy figures don't
mean anything if you can't justify the applicability of the figures to
the situation involved.
(Not saying you're wrong, just saying you should slow down)
--
From the Random Fingers of --
Ray Chen
{allegra | ihnp4 | mhuxi}!princeton!down!tilt!chenr
"It's amazing what a thousand monkeys and a few typewriters can accomplish..."renner@uiucdcs.UUCP (04/23/84)
#N:uiucdcs:29200123:000:1949 uiucdcs!renner Apr 9 23:16:00 1984 tim sevener (iuvax!scsg) writes: > ...The best way to reduce our taxes is to make the rich pay theirs!! Perhaps a few facts will help in understanding this issue. My source is the U.S Statistical Abstract (1982-3), table number 435: "Individual Income Tax Returns, by Adjusted Gross Income Classes: 1965 to 1980." All figures are in billions (1.0e09) of dollars. The question here is: can the tax burden of non-wealty individuals be significantly reduced by increasing the tax burden of the wealthy? In 1980, the total individual AGI was 1,163.7 billion dollars. The following table shows what we could gain by taking the *entire* AGI of the wealthy classes; that is, it shows the difference between their AGI and their current tax burden. confiscate all % of income of those % of tax total current increased current with AGI > than returns AGI tax revenue revenue $1,000,000 0.004 9.2 3.6 5.6 0.3 $500,000 0.017 17.5 7.9 9.6 0.5 $100,000 0.42 104.2 38.1 56.1 3.4 $50,000 3.1 269.2 77.6 191.2 11.8 $30,000 14.8 675.4 147.5 527.9 32.7 At this point we see that the "soak the rich" schemes have a problem. There seems to be a shortage of rich people. Unless you define "rich" as having an income greater than $50K, this scheme just can't raise a noticable amount of money. To bring in enough extra cash to cover this year's deficit, you would have to take every nickel made by those earning over $50K and from some of those earning $30-50K. CONCLUSION: an increase in the tax burden of the wealthy will not affect the tax burden of the non-wealthy. We will have to find some other way of reducing our taxes; making the wealthy "pay theirs" won't work. Scott Renner {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!renner