It's true. Do the math below. WILL YOU?
ALERT: 71% of Workers' & 50% of Households
Earn Less Than $45,000.
Let the The GOP Tax Cuts Expire!
Reinstate the Marriage-Penalty Relief & Child Tax Credit
AND MOVE ON!
Up until now, it's been a dirty little secret.
So, please Sunset the Bush Tax Cuts Now
Then, change the code that penalizes single people, PLEASE!
See where you fall on the National Wage scale and
Figure out your tax changes below:
Analyzing the Chart:
The chart above was extrapolated from the SSI Table below. It's not a perfect chart, but it really smacks you with the unjust reality of wages in America.
As you can see, the chart is divided by five Horizontal Indicators representing the number of wage earners up to 25,000,000 and 58 Vertical Indicators (VI) representing the number of wage earners per wage.
To avoid confusion and help us read the chart, it is important to note that the 58 Vertical Indicators progress from 0 upwards in an assorted manner:
0 - $195,000 progress at $ 5,000 per VI
$195,000 - $300,000 progress at $105,000 per VI
$300,000 - $450,000 progress at $ 50,000 per VI
$450,000 - $ 1.0 million progress at $350,000 per VI
$1 million - $ 4.5 million progress at $500,000 per VI
$4.5 million - $20 million progress at $3.875 Mil per VI
Here's how wages are distributed for 92% of wage earners in America. Again, the numbers for the chart above were taken from the following SSI table:
Before we play with these numbers, it is important to note that:
Our wages have not increased since the 1980s. In fact, the only thing that has trickled down is the American Wage which, if you adjust for inflation our wages are worth less today.
It is also important to note that we lost over 4,500,000 jobs between 2008 and 2009.
What will happen to your tax liability if the Tax Cuts Expire?
You can use the information below to get an estimate of your 2010 tax liability and your 2011 liability IF the tax cuts revert back to 2000(?). Again, we are just estimating to get a general sense.
Here's some wisdom: Maybe we need to call the GOP's bluff and, like the good, patriotic Americans we progressives are, start demanding our rights to pay the higher tax!!!! And, while we are at it, also demand that the top 5% wage earners pay what has been a traditional rate of tax for the years between 1933 and 1983: Between 50% and 90% on all income!
We need to play a strong hand first and, as with any good hand of poker, be willing to risk the power of our bluff, even the outcome if necessary.
The Worst Case Scenario is that we all suck it up even more BUT in short order, if the top 78,000 wage earners pay a TRADITIONAL TAX RATE on their earnings, the deficit will go away, and we will have a balanced budget barring bizarre disasters real or manufactured.
Americans earned over $5 Trillion dollars as W-2 Reported Income. This doesn't include Capital Gains, etc., just wages as reported:
The "raw" average wage, computed as net compensation divided by the number of wage earners, is
Net Compensation: $5,894,034,621,402.63 divided by
Number of workers: 150,917,733, or
Average Income: $39,054.62
Average Income includes ALL wages, even those who earned $1,000,000 and more, so it is always higher than the Real Wages Earned by most Americans.
Based on data in the table below, about
65.7 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the $39,054.62 raw average wage.
Mean Income, although still higher than Real Wages, is a better test as it eliminates the high wage outliers.
By (this) definition, 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage, which is estimated to be $26,261.29 for 2009.
Here's our Aggregate Income figures for 92% of US workers:
You will find the tax rates for 2010, as well as the years from 1930-2009 here.
Here are the IRS deduction rules for 2010:
IR-2009-93, Oct. 15, 2009
WASHINGTON — ...Key provisions affecting 2010 returns, filed by most taxpayers in early 2011, include the following:
The value of each personal and dependency exemption available to most taxpayers is $3,650, unchanged from 2009.
The new standard deduction for heads of household is $8,400, up from $8,350 in 2009.
For other taxpayers, the standard deduction remains unchanged at $11,400 for married couples filing a joint return and $5,700 for singles and married individuals filing separately.
Nearly two out of three taxpayers take the standard deduction rather than itemizing deductions, such as mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes.
Various tax bracket thresholds will see minor adjustments.
For example, for a married couple filing a joint return the taxable income threshold separating the 15 percent bracket from the 25 percent bracket is $68,000, up from $67,900 in 2009.
The annual gift tax exclusion remains unchanged at $13,000. (You can receive up to $13,000 in gifts with no tax liability)
Here's the rates for 2000 and 2001, which is what the rates will revert to if the Bush Tax Cuts sunset as determined by the Legislation Bush signed:
Marriage-Penalty Relief & Child Tax Credit
Both sunset in 2010.
Here is another Poker Chip. Will the GOP REALLY nix the program they touted as a Family Values Tax Relief program? Really? LOLWT!
Heck, I don't even know how to play poker, but it's obvious that bluffing is a big part of the game. And who is the best bluffer? Often the player who can afford to lose it all.
What do we have to lose? Well, everything if we don't take back the reins of power from those who serve power and greed. EVERYTHING.
And, then when the dust settles, it's time to talk about our Tax Code History. It's changed many times. I invite you to take some time scrolling through the link above and viewing the different codes under different Presidents. It's interesting.
For more on the gory details (about the Tax Cut Sunset, read this guest column on The Wall Street Journal Online by Edward McCaffery, a law professor at the University of Southern California, who argues that while the Bush tax reforms do offer some benefit to middle-income taxpayers, married couples in the lower- and upper-income levels are still penalized by the current tax code.
For more charts that demonstrate that
Social Security is NOT in trouble
The Deficit is caused by the tax cuts
Where we spend our tax dollars,
Etc
Read: Bring On the Charts: Drown the Cat F'd Commission
Link here:
LASTLY: If you've read this far, we are probably friends. Is it just me, but when I look at the 2000-2001 tax tables, do you see a couple of letters in the white space. Anyone else see it, too? Honestly, I wouldn't put it past a few of the BushCo toadies to send us a message when they gave their friends a free pass to rape and pillage tax free.