Quote:
Originally Posted by theking
Warren Buffet...a multi...multi billionaire once stated that he pays less in taxes than his $90,000 per year personal secretary does. When billionaire Howard Hughes was alive he paid taxes on $50,000 per year...which is what he declared as his annual income.
Loop holes for the wealthy are clearly in abundance.
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Sure, a couple megamillionaire's/billionaires business owners, CEOs, and high-level executives know how to exploit the system and do so. This justifies charging everyone above $250k a much higher rate? Sure, $250k is quite good money, but it's not rich status either. I say $250k because that's the number Congress originally wanted to target.
Perhaps we should ask Warren Buffett, and the others, to stop raping the system they complain about?
If I recall correctly, and I'm sure that somebody can correct me, Warren Buffett takes his income from capital gains taxes, which is significantly less than standard taxes. A married couple making $150k each a year cannot do the same if they are making that money as a salary. I am betting that Mr. Buffett's middle level executives that take six-figure salaries pay more than Mr. Buffett's secretary in taxes.
Mr. Buffett can stop raping whenever he wants. Until then, he just sounds like a hypocritical sound byte.
I keep hearing this argument that we should be taxing the rich because they all avoid taxes anyway. If that were the case, what would an increase in taxes even do? It seems to be that the real solution should be targeting those that avoid the taxes instead of raising the taxes on those that don't. Along the same line of thinking, there are also a lot of people that exploit welfare and the other forms of government assistance... should we drop all of these programs due to the ones that exploit the system? I certainly don't think so, a lot of people really need and deserve that help, let's find a way to root out the ones that don't. The counter argument to that is... "that would be too hard."
In both scenarios, seems like corruption and fraud is the issue. I don't see how punishing those that follow the rules solves the problem.