i guess i dont understand what you mean when you say "but it's the top 20% i'm considering, and that's not very far off. not today"
i'm not sure what that means. what about the top 20% are you considering?
sorry, i was trying to type my response while i was on a conference call at work.
the deductions and breaks that i think are valid are applicable to everybody - not just the wealthiest of americans. but you don't see poor people taking the Roth IRA deduction, or claiming the interest on their vacation homes for obvious reasons. your original list suggested that several deductions and breaks should be eliminated in favor of government programs to assist the needy, and we've been discussing the disparity in wealth/taxes among the richest of the rich. but that list didn't give a guideline for what they considered "wealthy" - it just says "tax breaks for the wealthy" and gives this massive figure that could be saved if we eliminated those deductions. well, i'm suggesting that "wealthy" is a much broader group of people than we've been debating today.
will eliminating those tax breaks for the top 1% cause them any financial pain? probably not. but eliminating those tax breaks for the rest of the people (or in my poorly worded post, that top 20% group that isn't super rich, but still considered "wealthy") cause them financial pain? i think it could.
without going too far off the deep end, let's use the top 10% from your earlier post as an example. you noted that people in that 90th percentile earn about $100k, which i'm assuming is per household. that's a lot of money, but for two professionals, it's not a ridiculous amount. now, lets say that one of the professionals went to law school, and has student loans of about $50k. the interest on those student loans is deductible, right? well, that's one of those items in the "put a cap on how much you can deduct based on how much you make" category. as it turns out, the full amount of interest ISN'T deductible if they make more than X amount as a family (i don't know the exact amount, but this is a valid example - and of course i'm oversimplifying it). they get to deduct some, but not all. now, that family might have a kid and a mortgage and other bills, so even though they make $100k it's not like they're sleeping on piles of money. and eliminating that deduction might cost them several hundred, if not a thousand dollars at tax time. that's a mortgage payment. or utilities. or the amount they would have otherwise invested in retirement. those deductions "for the wealthy" apply to people who don't think of themselves as wealthy.
obviously i'm bitter about this subject because, guess what, i'm doing my taxes and this shit applies to me even though i'm not "rich people".
And Tony, you would be ok with the rich paying 10%? I find that baffling.
i'm in favor of a flat tax, frink. i'm not sure what else you want me to say. 10% is too low - it should probably be closer to 20, but i was going based on the two options you outlined. i realize this sounds nutty, but if you want to tax me twice as much as somebody else, i should get twice as many votes as them. sorry, i realize that sounds all tea party nutjob. it shouldn't matter how much i make. you want to pretend that we're all equal, but then say that we're not all equal?
