Fact check: Biden keeps saying billionaires pay 8 percent in taxes. Not really.

[The_Waco_Kid]

i find it amusing some of our "uninformed" posters think the rich (TWK among others here) don't pay their fair share of taxes


poppy cock! the rich support the welfare state bums! and i'm getting tired of it!


Fact check: Biden keeps saying billionaires pay 8 percent in taxes. Not really.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-kee...144421287.html


some of our friends like to "criticize the source" as fake news .. well this is the source ...





hardly a far right outlet .. eh?


“Look, folks, you know how many billionaires we have in America today? One thousand. You know what their average rate - tax rate - federal tax rate is? Federal tax rate is 8.5 percent. Raise your hand if you’d trade your tax rate for 8.5 percent. I’m serious. Think about this. There’d be $40 billion raised if they even pay 25 percent.”



There are some “facts” that Biden likes to recite in almost every speech. In the past year, in more than 30 appearances, the president has referred to billionaires paying about 8 percent in federal income taxes. He said it in his last State of the Union address, and odds are he will say it again when he addresses Congress in March.


The line is a key part of his argument to impose a minimum 25 percent tax on all taxpayers with wealth greater than $100 million. That would raise about $360 billion over 10 years, the administration estimates.


But if you check Treasury Department calculations for what the richest Americans already pay in taxes, you would see that the richest 1 percent pay in excess of 20 percent in income taxes and more than 30 percent in all federal taxes. Even if you drill down to the top 400 wealthiest taxpayers - data that was publicly available on an annual basis until President Donald Trump killed the report - they paid an effective tax rate of 23.1 percent in 2014. These taxpayers - with $127 billion of income - that year paid $29.4 billion in income taxes, or more than 2 percent of all income taxes, the IRS said. That’s more than the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers combined.


Here’s the funny thing: Biden’s 8 percent estimate is derived from that same tax data on the top 400 taxpayers. So what’s going on? The president is describing a tax system that he wished existed - not the system in place.


The facts
Under the 16th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1913, “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” Biden’s startling statistic depends on an expansive definition of income.


A person’s effective tax rate is determined by the percentage of their income that is devoted to paying taxes. If a person earned $50,000 a year and paid $5,000 in taxes, then their average tax rate would be 10 percent.


But what is a person’s income? Many economists would say it is more than just the numbers on your paycheck. Your employer pays half of the Social Security payments that are due and might also include health insurance benefits and contributions to a 401(k) retirement plan. Most economists would say your salary is reduced by the value of those contributions, so it should be counted as part of income.


Indeed, when the Treasury Department determines average tax rates, it includes such items (and other income streams, such as welfare payments) in its calculations.


So let’s assume in our example of the $50,000-a-year salary that those additional employer benefits added $15,000 to that person’s income, for a total of $65,000. That would reduce the effective tax rate to 7.6 percent.


In the 1920s and 1930s, two economists, Robert Haig and Henry Simons, proposed a broad definition of income that included any gain in asset value, whether the assets were sold. The idea was to capture a person’s economic well-being. Under the current tax system, a person generally pays a capital-gains tax (20 percent) when they sell an asset, such as shares in a company, that has gained in value. But under Haig-Simons, any gain in asset value during a year would be a taxable event.


Suppose our taxpayer earning $65,000 in salary and benefits lives in a house that rose in value $35,000 in one year. Under Haig-Simons, the person’s income would be $100,000, even though the house had not been sold. If they paid $5,000 in taxes, their tax rate would be only 5 percent. So, just by fiddling with the income figures, we have cut the tax rate in half.


This brings us to Biden’s statistic. In 2021, two White House economists - Greg Leiserson of the Council of Economic Advisers and Danny Yagan of the Office of Management and Budget - published a blog post that estimated what the tax rate would be for the 400 wealthiest households if unrealized capital gains were considered part of income - a modified version of Haig-Simons. The report estimated that these households had an average federal individual income tax rate of 8.2 percent for the 2010-2018 period.


The steep run-up in stock prices in recent years has meant the wealth of super-wealthy Americans has risen significantly, even if they never sell stock that would trigger a tax liability. In fact, when interest rates were low, it was more cost-effective for a billionaire to borrow money against the value of those shares than sell them. The White House economists estimated what the tax rate would be if that income - now not subject to taxation - were included on their tax returns.


White House officials told The Fact Checker that this concept is no different from what the Treasury Department or the Congressional Budget Office do when they include other income streams, such as health insurance and retirement benefits, in their estimates of effective tax rates. Previously, the officials said, there had not been a way to measure unrealized capital gains.


As is often the case in economic studies, there are limitations in the figure - caveats that get lost in the presidential retelling. The blog post did not consider the impact of inflation on unrealized gains; inflation reduces the value of capital gains and thus overall income, though it’s not considered for tax purposes. The blog post also did not include the impact of estate taxes, which are designed to recapture some unrealized gains at death. Nor did it include corporate income taxes - often paid by the wealthy. All of these items would raise the effective tax rate paid by billionaires from the 8 percent cited by Biden.


In a paper published in the peer-reviewed Oxford Review of Economic Policy in August, Yagan, now at the University of California at Berkeley, updated the estimates to conclude that the top 400 households paid an average tax rate of 9.6 percent in the 1992-2020 period - and 12 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. The real average tax rate ranged from a low of 5.2 percent in 1999 (after a phenomenal bull market) to a high of 32.6 percent in 1992 (during a recession). He also said the effective corporate tax rate could be 29 percent for these households, though he did not study the issue in detail. (Corporations also have ways to greatly reduce taxes.)


Alan D. Viard, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise
Institute, said that “unrealized income is income” but that ideally discussion of inflation “should have been included in the blog post and/or President Biden should cite the numbers from the article rather than those from the blog post.”


Laying aside the accuracy of the estimate, the other issue is that Biden frequently suggests he is describing the current tax system. We reviewed his comments over the past year, and he usually compares the 8 percent tax rate for billionaires with effective tax rates paid by police officers and firefighters. The implication often is that he is describing the current system - which some experts said is misleading.


“It’s disingenuous, at best, to tout an eight percent figure without explaining how it’s calculated, and acknowledging that it is based on an aspirational definition of gross income that isn’t currently in effect,” said Robert Willens, a leading tax and accounting expert. “Further, he risks even more opprobrium being heaped on wealthy taxpayers who are, based on widely cited statistics, paying a very large proportion of the aggregate income taxes the IRS collects each year.”


Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, who has written extensively on this issue, noted that “no other OECD country today has a general tax on unrealized gains, and the U.S. never has.” The effective tax rates from official bodies such as Treasury “all show that rates at the top end are much higher than at the middle and bottom end. That undermines the Biden narrative, so they’ve invented their own statistic.”


Viard was more sympathetic, saying Biden “is highlighting the consequences of the fact that they are not currently taxable.”


“The tax system omits a variety of forms of income that - on balance - favor wealthy people,” said William Gale of the Brookings Institution. “The problem is the tax code - not the statistic.”


“Most Americans agree that when a billionaire’s wealth increases by millions of dollars in a year, that is income,” said White House spokesperson Michael Kikukawa. “And economists across the political spectrum, including the American Enterprise Institute and the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, agree that a person’s income is equal to the change in their net worth. By quantifying the income that the wealthiest Americans receive from unrealized capital gains, the CEA-OMB analysis applies this standard definition of effective tax rates, adding to our understanding of just how low billionaires’ tax rates are.”


Biden is careful to note he is speaking about federal income taxes, yet he is being too facile with this statistic. With proper framing, he could educate his listeners about how the super-wealthy can escape taxation under the current system - and then make a pitch for his billionaire tax. There’s some value in highlighting how not all income obtained by the wealthy is currently subject to taxation. But he shouldn’t suggest that billionaires already are paying such a low percentage of their income on taxes when numerous reports by the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and other agencies show they pay a much higher effective tax rate under the current tax system.


Moreover, the president should update his spiel by using the figures in Yagan’s article - which suggests that the billionaire tax rate with unrealized gains, while low, is not as low as the president keeps claiming.

[Ripmany]

In the meantime he doesn't nother about how much rich billionaires pay there should pay and pay there the power I not sticking some billionaire when I poor. He hates poor people he raised package postage, he raised tax on eBay seller from 20k to 0.6k as new liment. He shorten unemployment, he refused to raise minimum wage which could be easier done if taxes the rich and not poor them can the middle class can buy $50.00 happy meals and be happy.

[adav8s28]

When Mitt Romney ran for President against Obama his effective tax rate was 15%, he even admitted it publicly. The tax table might have the percentage at 36% for very high income earners. Most of the 1% are not paying anywhere near that, because of loopholes.

If the 1% are paying so much in tax why is Bill Gates asking to be taxed more? He is still in top 5 right? Elon Musk, Bezos, Buffet are still ahead of Gates I think.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by adav8s28

When Mitt Romney ran for President against Obama his effective tax rate was 15%, he even admitted it publicly. The tax table might have the percentage at 36% for very high income earners. Most of the 1% are not paying anywhere near that, because of loopholes.

If the 1% are paying so much in tax why is Bill Gates asking to be taxed more? He is still in top 5 right? Elon Musk, Bezos, Buffet are still ahead of Gates I think.

you did read this from the article yes?

they paid an effective tax rate of 23.1 percent in 2014. These taxpayers - with $127 billion of income - that year paid $29.4 billion in income taxes, or more than 2 percent of all income taxes, the IRS said. That’s more than the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers combined.

posted by the liberal Washington Bezos Post


are they wrong?

[adav8s28]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

you did read this from the article yes?

they paid an effective tax rate of 23.1 percent in 2014. These taxpayers - with $127 billion of income - that year paid $29.4 billion in income taxes, or more than 2 percent of all income taxes, the IRS said. That’s more than the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers combined.

posted by the liberal Washington Bezos Post


are they wrong?

OK, but 23% is a lot smaller than 36% don't you think? Most people are paying close to the percentage that is in the tax table for their income. I made $115,000 and my tax rate percentage is 28%. I am paying a higher percentage than the billionaires in your link. They are only paying 23%.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by adav8s28

OK, but 23% is a lot smaller than 36% don't you think? Most people are paying close to the percentage that is in the tax table for their income. I made $115,000 and my tax rate percentage is 28%. I am paying a higher percentage than the billionaires in your link. They are only paying 23%.

interesting that your numbers are "almost" as high as mine.. and my rate is is less than you claim. due to Trump's tax cuts (which benefited the middle class the most .. if you ask the IRS ..) went down from 28% to 24%.


that's about 5k at least into my hobby pocket.


your numbers are out of date you got a 4% decrease courtesy of Lord Donald Trump


as did i


https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/f...-tax-brackets/



24% $100,525 to $191,950 $201,050 to $383,900 $100,500 to $191,950


yeah .. that's us paying 24%

[adav8s28]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

interesting that your numbers are "almost" as high as mine.. and my rate is is less than you claim. due to Trump's tax cuts (which benefited the middle class the most .. if you ask the IRS ..) went down from 28% to 24%.


that's about 5k at least into my hobby pocket.


your numbers are out of date you got a 4% decrease courtesy of Lord Donald Trump


as did i


https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/f...-tax-brackets/



24% $100,525 to $191,950 $201,050 to $383,900 $100,500 to $191,950


yeah .. that's us paying 24%

Yes, I was referring to an older tax table. The last five years i have used the turbo tax software to do my taxes instead of doing them myself. With the Turbo Tax there is no need to actually see or look at the tax table.

We are paying a rate of 24%, the billionaires in your link are only paying 23%. This is part of the reason why the rolling Federal debt is 35 trillion dollars. The 1% don't pay enough tax.

[Texas Contrarian]

That WaPo piece by Glenn Kessler indeed makes some excellent points.

First note, as Waco Kid mentioned, Kessler is no conservative -- but he certainly does have an eye for spotting ridiculously dishonest and disingenuous bullshit. And when progressives start prattling about how the "rich" pay very little in tax, you'll usually find quite a target-rich environment for such endeavors.

First, just a couple of notes on previous comments:

Originally Posted by adav8s28

This is part of the reason why the rolling Federal debt is 35 trillion dollars. The 1% don't pay enough tax.

If so, it's a very, very, very small part of the reason, as taxes have been cut vastly more over the last few decades for the non-wealthy than for very high income earners and the wealthy. Of course, most of the reason for our rapidly ballooning federal debt is that spending has been skyrocketing at worsening rates.

Originally Posted by adav8s28

When Mitt Romney ran for President against Obama his effective tax rate was 15%, he even admitted it publicly. The tax table might have the percentage at 36% for very high income earners. Most of the 1% are not paying anywhere near that, because of loopholes.

Yes, Romney did report that his effective tax rate was close to that. (About 14% or just a couple of ticks higher than that, as I recall.)

That's because all (or at least, almost all) of his income was derived from capital gains or carried interest, which has always been taxed at a much lower rate than salary and fee income. The capital gains tax rate was 15% then, but a little over 10 years ago was raised to 23.8%. (That should have gladdened progressives' hearts!)

The WaPo article speaks largely to the issue of introducing "fairness" to the tax code by taxing unrealized gains.

That's an absolutely terrible idea, for the following reasons.

First, suppose your portfolio enjoys a pretty nice year in the markets, as we experienced this past year with the S&P 500 appreciating about 25%. If unrealized gains were taxed, our friendly Treasury Department would then ask you to kindly send in 23.8% of your gains, irrespective of whether you had sold any of your stocks. Chances are pretty good that you'd then need to sell some assets to pay the tax. In any event, selling pressure arising from that need alone (in the aggregate, among all investors) would exert downward price pressure on the market.

Further, suppose a nice year with a 25% gain was followed by a modestly bearish year with a 20% accross-the-board decline in your holdings' market value, leaving you exactly where you were 24 months earlier. Would Treasury cut you a tax refund? (Good luck with that!) Remember, the publicly traded markets are quite volatile and cyclical.

So that's pretty bad. But here's something that's even worse.

Taxation of unrealized capital gains would incentivize a lot of very large investors to package many of the nation's most attractive and promising enterprises and move them into private equity entities that wouldn't be subject to such fluctuations in market value and would thus be much harder targets for the nation's most aggressive taxers and spenders.

So, as you can easily see, taxation of unrealized gains, while putatively decreasing wealth inequality by introducing a "fairer" tax system, would actually increase it by reducing the returns available to smaller investors by shifting a significant portion of the most prized assets and ventures into investment vehicles only available to high net worth individuals.

And those who think it would be a good idea to dramatically increase the capital gains tax rate in the interest of "fairness" would do well to take a look at this:

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/...df/tbb-066.pdf

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian

That WaPo piece by Glenn Kessler indeed makes some excellent points.

First note, as Waco Kid mentioned, Kessler is no conservative -- but he certainly does have an eye for spotting ridiculously dishonest and disingenuous bullshit. And when progressives start prattling about how the "rich" pay very little in tax, you'll usually find quite a target-rich environment for such endeavors.

First, just a couple of notes on previous comments:



If so, it's a very, very, very small part of the reason, as taxes have been cut vastly more over the last few decades for the non-wealthy than for very high income earners and the wealthy. Of course, most of the reason for our rapidly ballooning federal debt is that spending has been skyrocketing at worsening rates.

indeed and continuing to gouge the rich to support massive wasteful spending isn't the answer.

Yes, Romney did report that his effective tax rate was close to that. (About 14% or just a couple of ticks higher than that, as I recall.)

That's because all (or at least, almost all) of his income was derived from capital gains or carried interest, which has always been taxed at a much lower rate than salary and fee income. The capital gains tax rate was 15% then, but a little over 10 years ago was raised to 23.8%. (That should have gladdened progressives' hearts!)


which means Romney like Warren Buffett knows how to maximize his income compared to how it is taxed.


The WaPo article speaks largely to the issue of introducing "fairness" to the tax code by taxing unrealized gains.

That's an absolutely terrible idea, for the following reasons.

First, suppose your portfolio enjoys a pretty nice year in the markets, as we experienced this past year with the S&P 500 appreciating about 25%. If unrealized gains were taxed, our friendly Treasury Department would then ask you to kindly send in 23.8% of your gains, irrespective of whether you had sold any of your stocks. Chances are pretty good that you'd then need to sell some assets to pay the tax. In any event, selling pressure arising from that need alone (in the aggregate, among all investors) would exert downward price pressure on the market.

Further, suppose a nice year with a 25% gain was followed by a modestly bearish year with a 20% accross-the-board decline in your holdings' market value, leaving you exactly where you were 24 months earlier. Would Treasury cut you a tax refund? (Good luck with that!) Remember, the publicly traded markets are quite volatile and cyclical.

So that's pretty bad. But here's something that's even worse.

Taxation of unrealized capital gains would incentivize a lot of very large investors to package many of the nation's most attractive and promising enterprises and move them into private equity entities that wouldn't be subject to such fluctuations in market value and would thus be much harder targets for the nation's most aggressive taxers and spenders.

So, as you can easily see, taxation of unrealized gains, while putatively decreasing wealth inequality by introducing a "fairer" tax system, would actually increase it by reducing the returns available to smaller investors by shifting a significant portion of the most prized assets and ventures into investment vehicles only available to high net worth individuals.

And those who think it would be a good idea to dramatically increase the capital gains tax rate in the interest of "fairness" would do well to take a look at this:

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/...df/tbb-066.pdf

well said TC!

[VitaMan]

Check the new way California is going to charge for electrical service if you want to get amped up.


If you earn more......you pay more.

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by VitaMan

Check the new way California is going to charge for electrical service if you want to get amped up.


If you earn more......you pay more.

that's a state level issue and has nothing to do with Biden's false claim about federal taxes and the rich.


and all that will do is drive more people out of California to states like .. Texas and Florida

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by adav8s28

When Mitt Romney ran for President against Obama his effective tax rate was 15%, he even admitted it publicly. The tax table might have the percentage at 36% for very high income earners. Most of the 1% are not paying anywhere near that, because of loopholes.

The first part of your paragraph is deceptive and the second part is untrue Adav8s28. I assume you realize this already from TC's excellent post. I'll add some color.

This is no criticism of you, you're just repeating what you've seen and read in biased sources.

Here are the IRS individual tax statistics for 2020, the latest available year,

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-t...d-gross-income

See columns S and T. Here is income tax paid divided by (a) taxable income and (b) adjusted gross income (AGI), for household returns in certain AGI brackets. It's presented as follows:

Income bracket / Tax paid as % AGI / Tax paid as % taxable income

$30,000 to $40,000 / 9.6% / 5.5%
$40,000 to $50,000 / 9.6% / 6.2%
$50,000 to $75,000 / 10.6% / 7.4%
$75,000 to $100,000 / 11.4% / 8.5%
$100,000 to $200,000 / 13.6% / 11.0%
$200,000 to $500,000 / 19.1% / 16.8%
$500,000 to $1,000,000 / 25.6% / 23.4%
$1,000,000 to $1,500,000 / 28.8% / 26.4%
$1,500,000 to $2,000,000 / 30.1% / 27.5%
$2,000,000 to $5,000,000 / 30.6% / 28.0%
$5,000,000 to $10,000,000 / 30.6% / 28.0%
Over $10,000,000 / 28.6% / 25.6%

Note that the system is progressive except for the over $10 million bracket, and still the $10,000,000+ bracket is progressive compared to people who make less than $1,000,000 a year.

I don't remember how the alternative minimum tax worked in 2012, when Romney was running for president, but at present the only way I'm aware of for a person to get his tax rate substantially below 28%, for AGI, is to make large charitable donations. And I don't know of a way to get income tax as a % of taxable income (which is after charitable deductions) below 28% if you're in a high bracket. So yeah, you can get the rate below 28% if you give away lots of your income to charity. To take two examples from both sides of the political divide, I'd a lot rather Warren Buffet and Elon Musk give their money to charities than give it to the federal government. They'll do a better job of it.

I suspect the $10 million+ group are paying less than the $5 million to $10 million group because a number of them are selling family businesses and the like, and only having to pay tax at 23.8% rate (28% after alternative minimum tax), up from 15% when Romney was running.

Originally Posted by adav8s28

If the 1% are paying so much in tax why is Bill Gates asking to be taxed more? He is still in top 5 right? Elon Musk, Bezos, Buffet are still ahead of Gates I think.

Because most of Gates wealth is in Microsoft stock and foundations. We don't see Gates asking for corporations and foundations to be taxed more.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by adav8s28

Yes, I was referring to an older tax table. The last five years i have used the turbo tax software to do my taxes instead of doing them myself. With the Turbo Tax there is no need to actually see or look at the tax table.

We are paying a rate of 24%, the billionaires in your link are only paying 23%. This is part of the reason why the rolling Federal debt is 35 trillion dollars. The 1% don't pay enough tax.

How are you coming up with that? The linked table shows single filers in the $100,525 to $191,950 bracket paying at a marginal rate of 24% and those making more than $609,350 paying a marginal rate of 37% bracket. And please note for most kinds of income, for high income taxpayers, you add the 3.8% Obamacare tax and/or Medicare tax on top of the 37%, to get to 40.8%.

The USA has the most progressive tax system in the developed world. That's after including sales taxes, value added taxes, property taxes, etc., along with the income tax.

Texas Contrarian posted this link sometime ago.

https://archive.nytimes.com/economix...ig-government/

Given that the capital gains, dividend, and ordinary income tax rates for higher income Americans have all gone up since then, it should be more true than ever. Please note that the top 1% in the USA pay about the same as the top 1% in France. And everybody else pays a lot less.

Taxes will have to go up a lot on the middle class if we don't cut spending.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

Fact check: Biden keeps saying billionaires pay 8 percent in taxes. Not really.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-kee...144421287.html
....Here’s the funny thing: Biden’s 8 percent estimate is derived from that same tax data on the top 400 taxpayers. So what’s going on? The president is describing a tax system that he wished existed - not the system in place.

Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian

Taxation of unrealized capital gains would incentivize a lot of very large investors to package many of the nation's most attractive and promising enterprises and move them into private equity entities that wouldn't be subject to such fluctuations in market value and would thus be much harder targets for the nation's most aggressive taxers and spenders.

So, as you can easily see, taxation of unrealized gains, while putatively decreasing wealth inequality by introducing a "fairer" tax system, would actually increase it by reducing the returns available to smaller investors by shifting a significant portion of the most prized assets and ventures into investment vehicles only available to high net worth individuals.

And those who think it would be a good idea to dramatically increase the capital gains tax rate in the interest of "fairness" would do well to take a look at this:

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/...df/tbb-066.pdf

Great posts and links gentlemen. Biden, Warren, Sanders, Saez and Zucman are a bunch of f....ing idiots.