Taxes, Millionaire | featured news

You can tell a lot by a country by how it deals with a new world of a plutocratic elite for whom national boundaries are but arbitrary lines on a map. And you can tell a lot about individual members of that elite by how they choose to deal with a world in which countries compete for their affections with low taxes.

California’s top earners are now facing a combined 51.9 percent federal and state income tax — the highest rate in the nation — a cause for grumbling and, maybe, an incentive to move.

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who changed the debate about U.S. tax reform in 2011 with a call for the rich to pay more, is now calling for minimum tax rates for millionaires.

As we have noted, the problem is more symbolic than real. Most very wealthy people pay a good chuck of their income in taxes. Reid in his statement pointed to “7,000 millionaires” who paid no federal income taxes, which is not very much out of the nearly 250,000 taxpayers who file income taxes with adjusted gross income of $1 million or more.

Lobbyists for a day, a band of millionaires stormed Capitol Hill on Wednesday to urge Congress to tax them more....

"People who are doing quite well and worry about low-income people not paying any taxes bemoan the fact that they get so many tax breaks that they are zeroed out," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. "People at the bottom of the distribution say, 'But all of those rich guys are getting bigger tax breaks than we're getting,' which is also the case."

Republican leaders on Sunday criticized President Barack Obama's proposal for a new tax on millionaires, calling it "class warfare" and predicting it will face heavy opposition in Congress.

President Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a "Buffett Tax" on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday.

The IRS says 1,470 millionaires paid no federal income taxes in 2009.

Republicans planned sharp cuts to foreign aid and education on Wednesday, while Democrats weighed a tax hike on millionaires, highlighting the yawning divide between the two parties in the budget debate.