Taxes on the Rich

I have not posted a blog for weeks. My life is terribly complicated right now. I hope things calm down in a week or two. I will return!

Meanwhile, although bogged down in my personal life, I still maintain interest in what is happening outside this insulating retirement community where I live. This week, reading the New Yorker during dialysis, I came upon an article, “Tax Me if You Can,” subtitled, “The things rich people do to avoid taxes.”

You read my rails against the super rich, who exploit the tax code to become richer and richer. Then I read this New Yorker article and learned the rich are even richer than I knew. The millions collected by ball players are peanuts compared to what some others are taking out of the economy.

This paragraph astounded me:

“The Internal Revenue Service discloses detailed statistics for the four hundred highest-earning taxpayers in the country. In 2008, the most recent year available, those taxpayers had an average adjusted gross income of two hundred and seventy million dollars each. Thirty of them paid less than ten per cent in federal taxes, and a hundred and one paid between ten and fifteen per cent. On average, the group paid 18.1 per cent – a lower rate than taxpayers who earn between two hundred thousand and five hundred thousand dollars.”

For me the basic fact is: No one deserves an income of two hundred and seventy million dollars.
For the entire article, find the New Yorker for March 19 and go to page 46. After reading that, turn to page 72 for a piece on Mitt Romney’s business career.