There’s a great site worth checking out. In the same vein as the Occupy Wall Street crowd who claim to represent 99% of Americans, there’s another site dedicated to the JUST 53% of Americans that actually pay federal income taxes. After all, if it weren’t for those 53%, who would pay for the 47% of Americans who presently pay no federal income taxes?
It’s a culmination of pictures and stories outlining how Americans who started from humble beginnings have pulled themselves up and made something of themselves. They have had their challenges, and they still do – but they are contributing back to society by starting businesses, working long hours and notably, paying federal taxes and living the American dream.
Darwin are payroll taxes not also taxes? They are based on my income (at least the first 106K for FICA). II pay them to the federal government and I don’t get them back. They give that money to other people or “loan” it for other government programs.
53% is the wrong number. Do you actually know how many people pay federal taxes, not qualified with words like “income”, “payroll”, “capital gains”, “excise” or some other weasel word that was inserted by a political hack to confuse and divide people?
There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Give us the right number, please.
I am the 37%.
The bottom 5% of the population in this country is wealthier than 63% of the rest of the world’s population.
EVERY case is unique. ANY “rule of thumb” is pure speculative bullshit.
You MUST check out an amortization schedule. What you must do.
1) On your CURRENT mortgage; How much interest will you pay on the remaining term?
2) On your potential NEW mortgage; Make sure you add ALL the costs of the mortgage (title fees, points, etc) to the loan balance. So, if you have a $100,000 refinance but there are $5,000 in fees, then your starting loan balance is $105,000. How much interest will you pay in the life of the loan?
Whichever scenario has the lowest cost (interest paid) is your better deal. Simple as that.
There are two unknowns in the above scenario that changes everything;
1) Is the homeowner making additional payments towards principle? If so, how much and how often?
2) How long will the homeowner keep the mortgage?? Hardly anyone …ever … keeps a mortgage to it’s full term. And as Darwin said, the term is KEY.
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Prior to refinance every homeowner should determine their break-even point. You need to look at closing costs to do this.
Example: You refinance and you save $200 per month. However, TOTAL closing costs are $9,000 (not at all unreasonable). Your break-even is therefore 45 months. (9000 / 200). You damn well better be in the house for 45 months or you just wasted some hard earned money for naught.
goddammit
goddammit
goddammit
I had two windows open.
The above post was supposed to be in Darwin’s mortgage refinance thread.
Jeezus, I am a dumbass.
Stucky – go read the comments on the Prioritize thread… MA
I’ve been wondering why OWS includes the FSA in their numbers. Strength in numbers I suppose. All the democrats have to do is circulate a false rumor that OWS wants to do away with Welfare, disability, unemployment, SNAP, and all the other free shit, and you’d have a bloody riot on our hands. The FSA IS the problem, not part of the solution.
Dragline, this is a pretty cut and dry statistic (which doesn’t change much each year btw) that about half the country has no federal income tax liability each year. It is illustrative of a few things:
1) you can make 90K/yr and have no federal income taxes due while someone else who makes 50K does. credits, deductions, loopholes.
2) About half the country pays for the various branches of federal govt, military, etc., plus the various bailouts, stimulus, givebacks to states, UI relief to states, etc. – and the other half doesn’t.
I get that those well below the poverty line are in no position to be paying fed income tax, especially in light of sales, state, local, payroll and other taxes already imposed. However, 47%? Seriously? Half the country has no federal tax liability?
The only taxes that should be paid are Tariffs and Inheritance taxes. An inheritance tax keeps someone from becoming SO rich that he can pay half of the citizenry to kill the other half.
Darwin, you didn’t answer my question. Maybe you didn’t understand it or I wasn’t clear. You do realize you just played the word game in your last post. First you said only about half the population pays federal INCOME taxes. Then you concluded your post by saying “half the country has no tax liability”. Those are two different statements entirely, but it is a semantic word game I hear over and over again as if saying more often makes it more true.
To make things more clear, please explain your position on payroll taxes. I’ll give you three simple yes or no questions:
Do you know what payroll taxes are?
Do you believe payroll taxes are federal taxes or not?
Do you believe payroll taxes are included in your quoted 53% statistic?
fyi ….
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When a 30-Year Mortgage is a 30-Year Prison Sentence
Don’t Be Suckered Into Buying a House Now
by MIKE WHITNEY
Don’t even think about buying a house for the next year or so. Not unless you can afford to flush tens of thousands of dollars down the toilet, because that’s what you’ll be doing.
Here’s what’s happening. As everyone knows, housing is driven by the same supply-demand dynamics as every other market. The problem is, the banksters have gamed the system so it looks like there’s less inventory then there really is, so prices are higher than they should be. By keeping millions of homes off the market the banks are protecting themselves from bigger losses. Unfortunately, it’s the buyer who ends up being the victim in this market-rigging scam.
Now take a look at this goofy article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal and I’ll try to explain what’s really going on:
“The housing market, which has struggled with an oversupply of homes for years, is facing a new problem: a lack of attractive inventory.
There were more than 2.19 million homes listed for sale at the end of September, down 20% from a year earlier, according to a new report from the real-estate website Realtor.com. That is the lowest level since the company began its count in 2007.
The report is the latest sign of how the U.S. housing market can’t seem to catch a break. While falling inventories are typically a sign of health, because reduced competition can boost prices, that isn’t the case right now.
Instead, real-estate agents say, people are pulling their homes off the market rather than try to sell them at today’s discounted prices. At the same time, banks have been more slowly moving to take back properties through foreclosure ever since processing irregularities surfaced last fall, temporarily reducing the supply of foreclosed properties. The shrinking supply isn’t driving up prices because demand is soft.
Yet there is still a substantial “shadow” supply of foreclosures and other distressed homes, estimated to be more than one million, that is likely to stream onto the market in the coming years. The pent-up supply is another constraint on any of the price gains that might normally occur when supply falls.” (“Slim Pickings Are Latest Headache for Home Sales”, Wall Street Journal)
Excuse me? Shadow inventory is around “one million” homes? You’ve got to be kidding?
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There’s so much wrong with this article, it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, the reason why people aren’t scarfing up homes at current prices has nothing to do with the “lack of attractive inventory”. That’s a load of malarkey. It’s because they no longer have confidence in the system. And why would they? After all, they’ve just seen their family and friends just get reamed in the biggest mortgage fraud scam in history. Are they supposed to go rushing back in to the market with money-in-hand so they can get fleeced too? Not likely. Besides, owning a house isn’t what it used to be. Not by a long shot. It used to be the cornerstone of the American dream and entre’ into the middle class. No more. Owning a house today means that one is shackled to a sinking asset that limits one’s options and mobility. Let’s face it, that 5-bedroom McMansion with the marble countertops is the albatross that keeps people toiling-away in the cube-farms until the day they get carted off to Potter’s Field. A 30-year mortgage is a 30-year prison sentence.
Also, the whole “falling inventories” story is pure bunkum. The housing backlog has mushroomed in recent years eclipsing anything in the history of the industry. The banks are just keeping homes off-market to save their own bacon. The whole thing is a joke. The only reason the charade goes on is because the government is in bed with the banks–concealing the details–so the rip off can continue without pause. It’s just more industrial-scale collusion.
Now check out this clip from an excellent report by McClatchy News:
“The housing market’s ballooning shadow inventory — buoyed by a yearlong foreclosure slowdown — stands as the most menacing obstacle to the recovery of the residential real estate market….
A McClatchy analysis of four years of foreclosure data and thousands of property records found record-high levels of shadow inventory in several housing markets across the nation.
In the supply-and-demand-reliant real estate market, the national supply of homes is officially listed at about 3.5 million, or about nine months’ worth; sales are on track to reach about 5 million this year. But once shadow inventory is added, that supply more than doubles, to at least 7.5 million…..(“Millions of homes lurk on bank inventories, casting doubts of rebound”, McClatchy News)
Got that? The real supply of homes is actually “double” the amount that’s being reported. So that means that the $400,000 rambler Mr Jones is planning to buy with his hard-earned money is probably worth about, uhm, $200,000. So, Mr.Jones is basically getting bent-over by the bankers while Uncle Sam sits in the bleachers applauding. Isn’t that what’s going on? And everyone wonders why public confidence is so low?
More from McClatchy:
“In the aftermath of the largest home-repossession campaign in history, mortgage lenders are holding properties off the market as a matter of strategy. …. a growing number of vacant homes have sat idle on banks’ balance sheets for several years.
According to the data firm CoreLogic, which has one of the more conservative estimates of shadow inventory, mortgage debt outstanding in the shadow inventory is about $336 billion. Liquidating REO homes through the sales process usually leads to significant write-downs on bank balance sheets.
Wary of seeing such large losses appear in earnest on their books, lenders have been reluctant to deal with bad loans head-on, said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.
“They’re afraid,” he said. “They don’t want to take those paper losses. Their books show that they have these assets that are worth ‘X’ amount of money. But those values are not real.”…”
“Afraid?” The banks are afraid?
The banks may be broke, busted, underwater, insolvent, and kaput, but “afraid”?
No, they’re not afraid. Why would they be? They have powerful friends in Washington who will bail them out whenever they get into a jam. Just look at the Fed’s balance sheet; $2 trillion and rising. And every dollar spent was gifted to some shifty Wall Street bankster who got caught up in his own crooked Ponzi-swindle.
McClatchy again:
“The outlook for shadow inventory has worsened considerably over the last year because of lender paperwork problems that have gummed up the foreclosure system….
More than a million foreclosures that were supposed to be completed this year have been pushed into the future, prolonging the housing crisis, RealtyTrac found….
Nationwide, there are 2.2 million homes stuck somewhere in the foreclosure process, and many of those cases have completely stalled….
Additionally, banks aren’t selling homes fast enough to justify more aggressive foreclosure filings. Even at the currently slowed pace, foreclosure starts are three times higher than foreclosure sales are, meaning that properties are being loaded onto the conveyor belt much faster than they’re being taken off.
“It’s kind of like a pig in a python,” Blomquist said. “As you start to see more of foreclosure sales and that inventory is cleared out, then you’ll begin to see more new filings.” (“Millions of homes lurk on bank inventories, casting doubts of rebound”, McClatchy News)
Okay. So, housing sales have stalled, foreclosures are stacked up from here to kingdom-come, and Obama and his GOP cohorts are determined to cut public spending and shave entitlements. Doesn’t that sound a bit like a deflationary spiral to you?
Bottom line: Prices have only one way to go; down, down, DOWN.
Still thinking about buying a house?
Stucky,
I appreciate the comment even when it’s on the wrong post. Twice. :>
Seriously, thanks for the note, I know what you meant.
Dragline,
No semantic wordgame there, a simple omission. I qualified “federal” several times throughout, so I think you and other readers know what I meant. In my prior reply, I indicated I am fully aware of the various taxes, which are all different, have different rates, different payment profiles, and fund different things, so it’s worth recognizing.
Answers to your 3 questions:
Do you know what payroll taxes are? Yes
Do you believe payroll taxes are federal taxes or not? They are clearly different from Federal Income Tax. Whether they are “federal” are inconsequential, they are not the Federal Income Tax, of which I and half the country pay several thousand dollars per year while half the country doesn’t.
Do you believe payroll taxes are included in your quoted 53% statistic? No. Reason being, they pay for entirely different things. They are taxed at different rates. And, well, half the US population does not pay the Federal Income Tax come year-end like I stated.
… and by they way, in highlighting how everyone pays payroll taxes, which have been reduced by 2% and would be reduced AGAIN if Obama gets his way, thus further increasing the unfunded commitments the payroll taxes are meant to satisfy, where do you think the shortfall will be made up? Do you think someday the payroll tax will be 4% more than where they are to make up for the 2% gimme this year? Nope. People in the 53% will see EVEN HIGHER federal income taxes to someday make up the shortfall. It’s a shell game, but only certain people are paying for it.
“Do you believe payroll taxes are federal taxes or not? They are clearly different from Federal Income Tax. Whether they are “federal” are inconsequential, they are not the Federal Income Tax, of which I and half the country pay several thousand dollars per year while half the country doesn’t.”
I see you still have problems answering simple questions. This was a yes or no question and you could not give a straight answer, just like someone running a political campaign or running an MSM outlet.
The answer is yes. Federal payroll taxes are federal taxes. Federal income taxes are also federal taxes. I agree the difference is inconsequential, but the fact that they are both federal taxes is the point, because both must be paid by the taxpayer will the same dollars. If we increased one and decreased the other, it would still be the same number of dollars coming out of my pocket. Or do you have magic, special dollars that you pay your payroll taxes with that can’t be used for any other purpose?
The fact that a dollar equals a dollar, which is not inconsequential, means that your artificial construct of 53% is just a bullshit statistic that is designed to try and divide people with something relatively meaningless, especially near the 53% margin. Do you really believe that there is a big difference between someone who pays $100 in income tax and someone who makes a few grand less or has a kid and pays none? Both are probably coughing up a couple grand in payroll taxes.
And by your theory, someone who pays $100 in federal income taxes has more in common with Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein than the guy who earns a little less and just got under the wire. Makes absolutely no sense.
There are many decent arguments to support your view of the world, but this is not one of them. It only detracts from your credibility. Waiving the “Obama sucks” flag does not support your thesis, and in fact makes it look like you are all hat and no cattle. This is about you and whether we should give credence to what you say.
Poorly reasoned bullshit is poorly reasoned bullshit, regardless what other redeeming qualities the speaker may have.
You’re trying to equate payroll taxes with federal income taxes. Wrong. It has nothing to do with Obama, this same lopsided burden has existed for years under Bush as well. Half the country enjoys all the services our government provides (whether you agree with them or not) without pitching in a dime. And here’s the best part – who is the most vocal group chanting “tax the rich” (which by the way, advocates an increase in the Federal Income Tax, which is the subject of this 53% argument)? … the ones who don’t even pay it now! How convenient.
Payroll taxes, in theory, should be a net zero outlay by workers because someday (bullshit, but this is what the govt promises now), these employees will have the same level of SS, Medicaire, etc. that they are paying in. A tax isn’t really a tax if I’m being paid back in the future right? How can you possibly equate this payroll tax, whereby you are promised an equivalent benefit later in life – with a Fed Income Tax – which is nothing of the sort? They are completely different.
Federal Income Taxes pay for all the shit that Americans benefit from. You know, wars, various branches of government we don’t need, regulators, foreign aid, etc. Whether or not you agree that these dollars are well-spent, they ARE spent nonetheless and funded by only 53% of Americans while 100% of Americans derive the benefits.
So, please stop trying to split hairs to advance your agenda. The bottom line is that while I pay like 7 different taxes (I was looking at my paycheck today and just saw imputed and some local thing I’ve never seen before WTF!), the largest one I pay – the most significant – is borne by me and the 53% and not the rest of the country.
I’ve said it before. I get it that those at the lower end of the spectrum cannot contribute as much as the rich. Sure. But 47%? You tell me HALF the country can’t afford – or more importantly – shouldn’t be OBLIGATED to help fund our federal government?
“Payroll taxes, in theory, should be a net zero outlay by workers because someday (bullshit, but this is what the govt promises now), these employees will have the same level of SS, Medicaire, etc. that they are paying in. A tax isn’t really a tax if I’m being paid back in the future right? How can you possibly equate this payroll tax, whereby you are promised an equivalent benefit later in life – with a Fed Income Tax – which is nothing of the sort? They are completely different.”
Well, that’s a nice theory, but reality and legality kind of gets in the way. Well, actually your theory is more bullshit. In the real world, where I live, payroll taxes are not put in a special account for those programs or for anyone’s future. They are used to transfer wealth to other people right now, and if there is any left over, the government spends it on other government programs. That’s why the so-called “social security trust fund” is a worthless piece of paper in vault in West Virginia. Whether future generations will be able to support us in our old age is highly doubtful unless the benefits are cut substantially or the problem is inflated away by lots of money printing.
“Federal Income Taxes pay for all the shit that Americans benefit from. You know, wars, various branches of government we don’t need, regulators, foreign aid, etc. Whether or not you agree that these dollars are well-spent, they ARE spent nonetheless and funded by only 53% of Americans while 100% of Americans derive the benefits.”
Again, this is not borne out in fact. A larger and larger portion of this money is “borrowed.” In the past 30 years, a lot of it from payroll taxes. The government takes it out of one pocket and puts it in another, conveniently forgetting its the same pair of pants.
I don’t have a blog that I am trying to drive traffic to and I don’t have an agenda, unless you call a profound dislike for innumerate bullshit an agenda. You live in the agenda/blog worlds. Projecting your own motivations on to me is more bullshit.
“I’ve said it before. I get it that those at the lower end of the spectrum cannot contribute as much as the rich. Sure. But 47%? You tell me HALF the country can’t afford – or more importantly – shouldn’t be OBLIGATED to help fund our federal government?”
So are you saying your solution is to RAISE taxes? Thanks, but no thanks. More bullshit.
By the way, by your standards we can solve all our income tax issues if we just charge everyone $5 in income tax. Then we can have 100% of income earners paying income taxes. Problem solved and everything would be just grand, wouldn’t it?
Well no, but it illustrates what a crock of innumerate bullshit your premise is to begin with. Meaningless drivel.
I don’t recall advocating for an increase in taxes. To the contrary, I’m constantly pointing out that the current trajectory is unsustainable and threatens the future of the country and our children.
Just broadening the tax base is all. When half the country pays, while also clamoring for further increases on the rich, isn’t that a bit ridiculous?
Cry me a fucking river, Darwin.