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Because the news media focus on what politicians say about the tax
system, rather than how it actually operates, few Americans realize
that:
-- Corporate income tax laws reward companies that move jobs
offshore, allowing them to earn untaxed profits as long as the money
stays offshore.
-- Widespread cuts in health insurance and pensions for the
rank-and- file are driven by a special law that lets top executives
defer paying taxes for years, in a way that adds 35 percent to the
cost of their bloated pay.
-- The 2001 Bush tax cuts included a stealth tax increase on
the middle class and upper-middle class that will cost them a half
trillion dollars in the first 10 years and, for 35 million families,
wiping out part or all of their Bush tax cuts.
-- The stealth tax boost on people making $30,000 to $500,000 was
explicitly used to make sure that the super rich would get their
entire Bush tax cuts.
-- A California couple who make $75,000 to $100,000 and have two
children face a 97 percent chance of losing part of their Bush tax
cuts to this stealth tax increase and overall will lose 42 percent
of their Bush tax cuts by next year.
-- If your child becomes seriously ill, Congress, under this same
law, will raise your income taxes if you spend more than 7.5 percent
of your income trying to keep your child alive.
-- Since 1983, under a plan devised by Alan Greenspan, Americans
have paid $1.8 trillion more in Social Security taxes than have been
paid out in benefits, money that is used to finance tax cuts for the
super rich while robbing the middle class of their capacity to save.
-- A family earning $50,000 this year will have about $1,500 of its
money funneled to the super rich because of the Greenspan plan.
-- Since 1993, the income tax burden on the 400 highest-income
Americans has been cut 40 percent when measured the way that
President Bush prefers, which is by counting how many pennies out of
each dollar go to income taxes. In 1993 the top 400 paid 30 cents
out of each dollar in federal income taxes. By the end of the
Clinton administration in 2000 they were down to 22 cents. Under
Bush, their burden is less than 18 cents. Everyone else felt their
tax bite rise to 15 cents on the dollar from an average of 13 cents. |
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