Does the "It's 15 percent above $17,000" statement have a typo?

Doesn't seem to make sense to this old goat.

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It actually is a fun article to read, especially since my minor in college was finance and tax accounting. Mr. Lauder does nothing illegal... he simply understands all the loopholes in the tax code and uses them effectively.

The article shows how the tax code has been piled upon by special interest after special interest... bills passed by Congresscritters bought and paid for with no idea what they're passing...

This article demonstrates the tax code needs to be scrapped and started over again. It will never happen of course... there is an army of CPAs and tax attorneys who thrive off the tax system the way it is today.

My suggestion (for what it's worth): graduated flat tax... no deductions at all. No artificial refunds either, like the Earned Income Credit. Simple, fair (assuming the brackets are correct) and easy.

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I don't think it's a typo, Irradiated, but that Max means wage-earning couples' taxable income (not investor income, which is currently taxed at a maximum 15%) has a marginal tax rate of 15% on taxable income between $17 thousand and $69 thousand, but everything above $69 thousand is taxed at 25%. Because a great deal of the income of very wealthy taxpayers comes from investment income, their "effective" federal income tax rate is lower than that of middle-classers.

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"The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, representing the top 0.000258 percent, fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008, the most recent data available."

Well, sure. The only surprising thing is that they bother to pay taxes at all. Those 400 people effectively own government, as we see by the refusal of Congress to raise taxes on billionaires in direct defiance of the will of the people. There's little wrong with this country financially that undoing Bush's tax cuts and getting out of the wars would not fix.

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Slinger, you give Lauder too much credit. He doesn't understand all the loopholes. All his expensive lawyers and accountants understand them.

But then you really miss the point, don't you?

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Also today, NYT editorial on Mitten's proposal to let all undervalued mortgage householders go bankrupt. He wanted the US automakers to do the same. And ironically, many of the companies his Bain Capitol took over did indeed go bankrupt after he leveraged them, kept the cash, and resold them. This same guy is tearing down his ocean front mansion to build a bigger one. Of course he never "hired" an illegal, his lawn contractor did. I doubt that he ever offered those robots in his garden a cold drink in summer or hot coffee with cookies in cold weather like my husband does. Whom do you think he will represent as President of the United States?

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Naomi Wolf on OWS: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci…

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Mag, I am still agnostic on this story but leaning toward thinking Wolf is full of it. Don't confuse her with Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine". ABL had BalloonJuicers stirred up to the point of a 400+ comment thread with a debunking of the story. I haven't waded through the majority of the comments. You also have to take into consideration that ABL stirs passions like no other front pager over there. I hope it is because of her in-your-face, take-no-prisoners writing style and nothing to do with race. Who knows?

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/11/25/ow…

It's so hard sometimes to figure out who has done the leg work for their reporting and who is just quoting anonymous sources without fact checking.

One thing I have taken away from this kerfuffle is that there is a market for tin-foil hats on the fringe left. The entire right wing is fertile territory for hat salesmen though.

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Comparing marginal rates to effective rates is kinda useless.

Here's a handy, slightly outdated chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incom…

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Hi Outlier. Thanks, I do read ABL from time to time and yeah, Wolf is stirring the pot here regarding federal intervention and collusion, I agree. However, her less-tinfoil lines of reasoning may help to supply, if not explain, the cause for some legitimate activism. I can fully get behind striking down Peoples United, for one. I think the strongest motive OWS should stick by is reform of campaign finance. When the effectiveness of voting for our representatives fails due to being outspent, what will we turn to? Human wave attacks?

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"Comparing marginal rates to effective rates is kinda useless." -- Gylippus

Hardly, G. The marginal rate is the rate one pays on the last dollar of taxable earned income -- after standard or itemized deductions, personal exemptions, dependent exemptions, etc. Even Bill Gates and Warren Buffett would have paid, for TY2010, if filing jointly with spouses, 10% on their first $16,750, 15% on their next $51,250, 25% on their next $69,300, and so on "progressively" until they would have paid 35% on all taxable "earned income" over $373,651.

However, all capital gains from stock and other property held for more than a year, plus all similarly "qualified" dividends paid to them were capped at 15% by the Bush tax cuts. So, Gates and Buffett could easily have deducted charitable donations (and probably did) in excess of their "earned" income, so that their taxable income, in the millions or billions, would have been taxed "effectively" at 15% or perhaps a little more. Thus Warren Buffet acknowledges that his tax rate is higher than the one his [salaried] secretary has to pay.

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The only thing I find 'shocking' about Wolf's article is that 'shocking' is used to describe the police-state tactics. Given the wholesale trashing of Civil Liberties after 9/11, there's little left to be shocked about. And, sadly, many of those trashings were met by either praise or silent acquiescence. (Of course some of us have been screaming/crying from the beginning of the assault, but we're a minority in comparison.)

As I watch the mayors/police ban the media from their middle-of-the-night raids as they assault folks for no other reason than they're protesting, I realize we're well on our way to becoming one of those countries that we're always lecturing about Freedom and Democratic ideals. And, sadly, our elections are also going the way of many of those same countries. So much so that I wish the UN would send some of those vaunted election-watch groups into our 2012 election...just look at what anti-vote shenanigans Scott Walker and his Republican thugs are currently engaging in. I fully expect that same Republican hack to decide all the upcoming referendums by pulling some more 'lost' votes out of her personal computer (and get away with it).

Yes, I hope I'm completely wrong about the state of our Civil Liberties/elections. But I remember wishing the same thing about Dubya's Presidency and the Iraq War.

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Sorry, I got in a hurry. I should have written "Thus Warren Buffett acknowledges that his tax rate is LOWER than the one his [salaried] secretary has to pay."

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"It's 15 percent above $17,000." Posted by Max

Irradiated, more accurately it's 15% on taxable income (Form 1040, Line 27 taxable income) above $17,000 up to $69,000 PLUS $1,700, or 10% tax on that first $17K of taxable income.

Please note that Max's examples are for "a married couple filing jointly".

You'll find the federal tax tables here to match Max's $17K and $69K percentages:

http://www.easyincometaxfilingonline.com/t…

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The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, representing the top 0.000258 percent, fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008, the most recent data available.....You are comparing apples and oranges...in one case ypu state the "EFFECTIVE" tax rate, the other example is "By way of comparison, taxable income above $69,000 for a married couple filing jointly is taxed at 25 percent. It's 15 percent above $17,000. Ronald Lauder does NOT feel your pain." is stating the standard IRS tax rate....BIG difference between effective rate and IRS Rate...

example
Let’s assume, just for this example, that my wife and I had a taxable income of $70,000. (This, by the way, is not the time or place to discuss what “taxable income” is. See the bottom of this post.)

We would pay a 10% tax on the first $15,650 of our income. ($1,565)

We would pay a 15% tax on the next $48,050 of our income. ($7207.50)

We would pay a 25$ tax on the next $6,300 of our income. ($1575)

If our taxable income was $70,000, our total federal income taxes would be $10,347.50.

Our EFFECTIVE tax rate would be 14.78%.

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Sounds like more reason to Occupy the IRS than Wall Street. The fleabaggers still don't have a plan, and they are about to become a seriously faded footnote in history. The group that was so egalitarian, it evaporated like dry ice in the summer sun.

Nope. Better for a bunch of whiners to gather under the banner of Envy and while away the hours getting in the way, beating upon the weak within their ranks, bully children, burn buildings and generally infect any place a large enough contingent decide to gather. Then, after they have worn out any small welcome they had, they cry about their little violatons of the First Amendment because the city and police do not want a gang of thugs camped out in the streets creating crimes and disease. Nobody is denying them their protest, unless they camp out, and there has already been a decision from SCOTUS about the difference between protesting and trespassing.

http://supreme.justia.com/us/468/288/

Even if they were not breaking the laws and being such pills, the failure of the Movement to actually do anything besides trespass, annoy, infest and pillage will see a backlash once the patience of thinking people is worn. Nobody in their groups are looking at absurd tax loopholes through which folks like Lauder escape their due. The hue and cry of the unwashed monkey mass is Raise Taxes! The idiocy of folks to fall back upon such simplistic jingosim when the game is already rigged and you could make the fleabaggers happy if we raise the taxes on the 'Rich' to 85%, and they will slink away, satisfied and dumb, never realizing that those same rich folks will never pay that amount thanks to volumes of loopholes and clauses within the tax codes.

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Steven E, you scorn the Occupy movement and they welcome your scorn. They will be around after you become worm food, but keep making stuff up and feeding it to yourself.

As the OWS sign says, If They Enforced Bank Regulations Like They Enforce Park Regulations....we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.

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Now so much scorn...okay, scorn, but also pity at a watsed opportunity, DBI. I know you would rather sacrifice your children on an Aztec alter of blood rather than face the facts, but the OWS fleabaggers are just the fad of the year, and not a productive one at that. I cannot make up some of the stupid, venal, criminal crap that so many members of so many of the OWS encampments have committed.

Hardly a worthy example of First Amendment liberties, and hardly and eaxample of how you change things.

I know, I know, you'll spew something toxic and hide your head in a dark place, but let us see what happens in February, DBI, and see what legs this mob has.

You want a prime First Amendment example, D, look at the higschooler who took the Governor of Kansas to class. She is the voice, she will be around far longer than the frenetic mobs and vandals of the OWS. She stuck it to that SOB, Brownback, and now HE is the one issuing an apology. She handled herself with aplomb that would mystify the OWS fleabaggers.

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