Old News?
I remembered reading a story that reported that half of US households don’t owe any income taxes, but I couldn’t remember which blog it was on, so I hit the search engines and found something a bit more interesting.
Sean Paul at the Agonist wrote the post I remembered and linked to an AP story on Yahoo Finance that is credited to Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer, for Wednesday April 7, 2010, 5:38 pm EDT.
I’m not an English or Journalism professor so I won’t give an opinion in those areas, but it seems very similar to the CNN Money post, 47% will pay no federal income tax, credited to Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer, for October 3, 2009.
On the general point of half of US households not paying income taxes – with about 10% unemployed, and another 10% underemployed, and real wages falling, people below the median US income don’t make enough to pay income taxes. These people are paying payroll taxes, and the dozens of other taxes that are imposed by the Federal, state, and local governments, and their payroll taxes have been covering a significant portion of the deficit caused by the Hedgemony’s tax cuts.
As I keep saying: there was never an income tax surplus, nor has the income tax taken in enough to actually balance the Federal budget in decades. FICA tax excess payments were used to cover the deficit and FICA tax payment were all of the Clinton budget “surplus”. The only problem with Social Security is that the government has to pay back what it borrowed.
