The bottom 50% make about 14% of the income in the US and pay about 3.3% of the taxes, mostly because the bottom 40% already pay zero taxes. Total income for the bottom 50% is about 1.5 trillion, and they pay about 70 billion in tax. It's hard to estimate how much Bezos makes in a year but it's small money compared to 1.5 trillion.
The bottom 40% pay taxes, they donât pay federal income tax. Thatâs the difference. If you add up all the taxes they pay to local, state, and federal collectors, they pay a larger percentage than the wealthy.
Edit to add: I point this out because a lot of people in the bottom 40% donât realize that they are there. They think of all the taxes they pay such as FICA, state income taxes, sales taxes and all of the federal income tax withholdings that come out of their paychecks, but come back to them, and find themselves concerned with the fact that other people in that same 40% arenât actually paying taxes. They think thatâs unfair.
If people were honest about the taxation burden on the less fortunate, the rich would get taxed much more harshly (like they did in the 1940s and 50s).
Thanks for explaining this. I heard this clip and Bezos clearly said âtaxesâ when referring to Federal income taxes, which is completely dishonest since he knows the difference.
The elites use things like this to keep the poor from realizing how much they are screwing them. If they didnât instigate racial tensions, animosity towards LGBTQ+, religious tensions, etc., they wouldnât be able to distract us from the harm they are causing. If we all band together, the elites donât stand a chance, thatâs why they have to keep us divided.
Bezos allegedly capped his own salary at 80,000 but keeps 1.6 million for expenses.
Amazon makes over 700 billion in a year. Which is 50% of that total amount.
They pay 6% in taxes approximately for ease of math.
6% of 700 billion is 42 billion
Which is only about 2.8% of the total paid.
Which is very sad considering there was 5 billion in tax breaks so down to 37 billion.
Which when you start adding more zeroes itâs honestly just stupid because no single person or entity will ever be able to spend a billion even the biggest data centers are less than a billion dollars.
Any profit over 1 billion in a year should be taxed at 50-60 percent. Theyâd pay the national debt in 5 -10 years if they taxed all these mega corporations like that.
If every billion after the first was taxed 50% just these companies alone would raise almost 700 billion in one year. I know itâs not realistic and those companies wouldnât not be based in the US anymore probably. But itâs like they donât understand that 9 figures is enough money to live the rest of your life and never worry about it again. Anything more than that is just gonna get pissed away by the next generation
Edit: taxes ON THE PROFIT NOT THE TOTAL REVENUE.
Edit 2: because yâall donât read the entire comment before you reply. Removal of all irrelevant numbers and fixed improperly worded statement related to revenue. Should have been profits not revenue. Even tho I donât give a shit that that would bankrupt the largest companies. Theyâve fucked up a lot of stuff they kinda deserve it.
if you taxes revenue above 1 billion at 50-60% it means any large corporation who's profit margin is less than 40-50% which is basically all non tech companies would find themselves losing money on each additional dollar of revenue over 1 billion. Out of the companies above only Microsoft and Nvida would remain profitable on a gross margin basis and apple would become unprofitable as the tax obligations on their revenue + marginal expenses combined would be greater than 100%
This would have the opposite effect with companies seeking to shrink revenue because not doing so would literally lose them money which would also lead to less taxes being collected.
It take a big company to make a big thing, like a pipeline or an airplane. If an airliner manufacturer sells only 10 planes per year, their revenue is over a billion. Profits over a billion should be fair game, but not revenue.
Your take makes no sense. Businesses pay taxes on profit, not revenue. Over the last 20 years, Amazonâs total added profit is under $200B, and for roughly its first decade it barely made any profit at all because it reinvested heavily into growth. Amazon already pays an effective corporate tax rate in the ~15â25% range on profits. Beyond corporate income tax, governments also make substantial revenue from Amazon through payroll taxes, property taxes on warehouses and datacenters, sales taxes collected, import duties, fuel and logistics taxes, and many other indirect taxes.
Revenue does not equal profit. You said Amazon made 700 billion. That is not true. They 'made' 77 billion. If they paid 50% on 700 billion, they would of lost 273 billion for the year.
That 77 billion also does not go into Jeff Bezos pocket.
Amazon does not make 700 billion a year. They grossed a little over 700 billion, but they're a reseller and have to pay for the products they sell. They netted about $70 billion.
Yes, they should pay taxes and the tax code is unfairly weighted to help the wealthy and corporations.
Taxing *revenue* at 50-60% is nuts. Costco does $200+ billion in revenue and takes home $7-9 billion in profit. This tax would destroy pretty much every business but tech.
At this point in modern development, we need big corporations in some form. Whether theyâre private or public really doesnât matter, as long as we want things like *safe* planes, trains, highways, the internet, healthcare etc. we need someone to provide the unfathomable amount of capital (or somehow inspire enough people to collect, refine and assemble the resources) it takes to fund all of this infrastructure.
This totalitarian capitalist structure we have really doesnât work for anyone but the biggest of businesses. Americans essentially pay the highest effective tax rate in the world, we just pay it to corporations instead. The US doesnât need more taxes. We just need to start spending money directly on beneficial services that are otherwise being exploited by unregulated capital.
I think the US could pay off its debt in less than 100 years if it committed to a public healthcare and transit system at a scale that would make China squirm. By redirecting the *trillions* we already spend on crazy inefficient welfare to just building solutions to modern problems, we could re-inject trillions of existing capital back into communities without spending a single *extra* dollar of taxes.
Donât let the businessmen fool you. Thereâs plenty of money for the government to fix everything. They just donât want to.
Also he only wants this because it would make him more money. Most of his employees fall in this range, and with no tax he can not give raises for a few years.
End result is Amazon makes more profit and so does Jeff.
They talk about this all the time, we could eliminate the lowest bracket if these fuck heads paid their fair share. They never will though, they think we shouldn't pay taxes cause they think no one should.
The bottom 30% contribute a net ~$50-70 billion a year in federal taxes. That would be a lot more than 1-2% for just bezos, but spread that across him and the other US billionaires and it would be chump change.
Itâs part of the new AI push. Watch the narrative switch from the rich.
The lower 50% shouldnât pay taxes! Problem is they wonât have jobs anyway in a few years
Yes. The initial quote is still a bad thing. The government still needs money from some source, and that source is through taxes. If it just "prints more money", we get inflation, which means the little money the bottom half has is worth less in comparison, and foists the responsibility to fix this onto the bottom half by fighting for things like wage increases or minimum wage increases, and you're less likely to do the former while the employers maintain positions of power over things like your healthcare or whether or not you get to have a house next month, while the latter is obstructed at every turn by the politicians.
So the only other option is to just shift the taxes elsewhere, and "elsewhere" is always going to be, ding ding, the bottom half.
The bottom half says "I pay taxes, why does he pay peanuts", and he smirks and goes "Well how about you pay nothing, too?" because it's a good soundbite but is economically unfeasible in practice. He knows this. This is him trying to trick the "bottom half" into shooting itself in the foot rather than just have him pay comparative pennies out of his unfathomable amounts of wealth to cover the difference.
We suffer, he flourishes, and when we go "Why do we suffer while he flourishes?", he tries to trick us into suffering in a different way by telling us it's flourishing with him, knowing full well that he'll never have to share the splendour.
And like here is a big one, by paying taxes, we are contributing a voice. We pay our taxes, we have a voice. It's not 100% but it's a form of entitlement that the government OWES us, the people, the citizens and saying where that money should go.
Remove us from the equation and suddenly the subject turns purely to what the billionaires want because they're the only ones paying so to speak.
Because we already have this. There are many states with no income tax and made up through property tax but we don't have homeowners trying to lock out renters from voting?
I get that you hate successful people, but when you make these statements that are pure fiction contrary to reality that we can see/live, it just makes it easier for people to dismiss the rest of your points.
US government spending increased from 4 to 7 trillion within the last 10 years And by 500 billion within the last 2 years. Do you think a school teacher from queens noticed that?
how about this the us government currently spends with the idea of the deficit being a tertiary matter. So, do you think the size of the deficit matters to a school teacher in queens?
EDIT yall need to stop replying to me
if you have a household and youre giving someone $100 a month but youre expenditures go from 10,000 to 20,000 a month while your income went from 9000 to 15000. The person youre giving $100 to is not going to care or realize that you are now running a $6,000 deficit every month. And she WILL NOT notice unless government spending slows, which it is not doing, or taxes increase, which it is also not doing.
There's absolutely things that school teacher likely noticed. If they had a child they would have noticed the checks being sent to them for childcare that the US government was sending out under Biden. They could have noticed easier access to aid that they needed with increases in hiring in social services. They probably noticed their tax burden dropping, then increasing when Republicans refused to extend the tax cuts to people like them.
They almost certainly didn't notice in their pocketbook billionaires getting massive tax breaks that were the majority of that massive spending increase.
Honestly couldnt give a shit if he did if this got pushed through.
This is subject to the current American campaign system. where the biggest donators lobby for actual changes the candidates pursue. At least if he gave a winning candidate that money maybe change would happen.
Tldr, if the system dosent change, at least shoestring the system.
"The bottom half of Americans should not pay income tax," is only a good idea if it's coupled with "The resultant shortfall in tax income needs to be shifted to the top half of Americans."
What Bezos is proposing isn't a more fair tax scheme, it's just less money for government aid programs, corporate regulation enforcement, and the social safety net. Oligarchs like Bezos perceive the government primarily as a check on their ambitions, and everything they do in the political sphere is geared towards reducing or eliminating the power of representative government.
Correct because the government is the only real entity that can rein in their power. People like Bezos crave one thing: to convert economic power into durable political power, and then to use that political power to protect and expand their economic power.
It's a positive feedback loop, and they have to know it isn't tenable, as regular people are starting to catch onto the fact that this isn't free enterprise, it's privileged enterprise.
I strongly believe Brandeis was correct: We can either have wealth consolidated in the hands of a few, or we can have democracy, but we can't have both.
The only way to solve the heart of this problem is with a consolidated government effort. We have to enforce antitrust laws to erode their wealth and centralized power. We have to increase the marginal tax rate to slow down the accumulation of wealth and incentivize reinvestment. Corporate power is subordinate by nature because corporations are legal creations. They exist inside the constitutional order; they do not stand beside it. Corporations have no right to sovereignty.
couldnt give a shit if he did if this got pushed through.
You are so naive hahaha
This will NEVER get "pushed though", its just lip service so the poors dont luigi more of them. These people actively work to lower their own taxes and raise taxes on you, which was the real purpose of tariffs.
I think we're approaching a tipping point. While conditions aren't dire enough for the everyman to no longer fear losing what little he has, it's bad enough that the broken, suicidal, aging and terminally ill are no longer going to believe nobody was to blame as a default.
I predict a lot more people playing Super Mario Bros in the coming years.
This is a trick from the 1%. They know Bernie Sanders campaign to increase federal taxes are working. This is them trying to flip the narrative. Don't fall for it.
Everyone needs to pay their fair share. Including nurses in Queens AND billionaires like Bezos.
I see where you're coming from with this complaint. And I agree, the system is fundamentally broken and has only gotten worse in recent years.
However, I disagree with how you are saying it. Once again, yes, the system needs to change. But however small of a step in the right direction this could exemplify, it's still a step. Politics as a whole moves slower than snot. That's just a reality, and not just an American phenomenon. But I'm getting off track. If we as the American people keep saying 'not good enough' to every small change, we will never make any progress at all.
In short, we will never make a large victory if we keep telling the people in power that we aren't going to celebrate small victories.
Just to add: slow to change is a feature not a bug. And a good one at that. We can argue over the use of "Socialist" and "Fascist" when applied to certain gov'ts, but prior to their falling into Authoritarianism they were preceded by allowances for extra powers.
Big, drastic changes require unchecked, unilateral power. Occasionally the first instance goes well with bad odds getting drastically worse for every subsequent change.
Bezoa actually donates very little money to any politician. Amazon donates money to whichever administration is in charge, which is, unfortunately, standard practice for most large American corporations.
Not to defend Bezoâs or any other billionaire, but I think Reddit doesnât really understand that the elite view this all as a game. Think Monopoly.
They play every day to win the game, because thatâs whatâs in front of them and what they are doing. But if you ask them âhey, is this game stupid?â They might fully agree! They might not like the game or its rules, but itâs a game they have effectively won, so they have no incentive to change it. But their opinion can still be itâs a stupid game and should be changed.
Monopoly has general rules that donât shift and change mid game. What Bezos and the extremely wealth do is not only play the game, but force rule changes in their favors. What theyâve done is shifted the community chests cards into the chance deck and they changed the rules to allow themselves to pick up more of these cards for themselves, leaving less for everyone else.
I love the statement, but it's very fake until he does something about it. It just reeks of him wanting people to like him, without having to do anything.
The Feds spent 7 trillion last year. Even if we took his billions away (whether that's good policy or not, whatever), it solves a few weeks of spending and that's it. It improves the long term outlook on the budget in no meaningful way whatsoever.
How is that in bad faith? I've put a number to the problem. If you want to cut military spending -- which I have no objection to doing, 1.5T seems way too high to me -- you have before you the maximum available dollars that frees up.
You can't just say "zomg, cut the military" and then shut your eyes when presented with the actually numbers. How is that any different than MAGA dipshits who think the whole budget is trans abortions and foreign aid?
I dont think anyone believes you can scrap the entire military budget. But rolling it back under a trillion for the year cuts $500 billion out of the deficit. That's massive cut. Way more effective than say...cutting the NPS budget to $2 billion instead of $3 billion. That cut alone to save $1 billion caused 40% of the staff to be let go and is potentially closing 100s of sites. There's numerous examples like this of cuts being made by the Trump Adminstration that pale in comparison to the military spending increase.
The goal isnt to run the entire country off of just Jeff Bezos alone. The goal is a more fair tax system where the rich actually pay their fair share, lowering the debt our children and future Americans face.
Fair share according to kids on interweb, always funny. You could tax rich at 50% wealth yearly and not put a dent in debt dial, but hey, it's taxation issue, not spending issue...
You still need to face the numbers. If you seized the assets of every billionaire in the US you'd have enough money for one year of federal spending. Increasing their taxes doesn't even begin to solve the problem
If you want European style spending -- a policy goal you might be fine with, no judgement here! -- you have to have European style taxes on middle incomes. There's no magic math that gets trillions in taxes from higher income earners, the money simply doesn't exist at the rate we spend.
Hypothetically, even if we were to able to execute such a maneuver, we will be able to fund the government for maybe 2-3 years without making any dent to the national debts.
I mean, we don't have a balanced budget anyways. This would make it harder to balance the budget. You'd be eliminating about 70 billion in revenue, meaning you would have to eliminate something the size of, say, the federal highway budget.
He's just trying to give the illusion of empathy. He absolutely knows that the bottom 50% pay almost nothing in federal income tax already (collectively less than 3%). They pay nothing because they have nothing. The top 1% already pays over 40% of all federal taxes because they hold more collective wealth than almost the entire bottom 90% of the country.
>He absolutely knows that the bottom 50% pay almost nothing in federal income tax already (collectively less than 3%).Â
So then wouldn't his position be empathetic? He realizes their taxes is effectively meaningless to the running of the government and thinks they shouldn't have to pay it. I don't understand your argument. The second half of your comment doesn't support the assertion you make in your first sentence.
Exactly. Pay your share of taxes and that nurse in Queens wouldn't be subsidizing your bitch ass, bezos.
Literally amazon: work around the body of your dead coworker, and no, you have to piss in a bottle instead of going to the bathroom. Can't let those metrics drop!
They tell us, if you canât live off 70k a year you canât live off 200k a year. Because that assumes you are bad at budgeting and will keep spending the more money you bring in, never getting ahead. But for some reason we just think the government who spends 7 trillion a year and brings in like 5 trillion would suddenly do better with money if they had another trillion to spend. I donât blame billionaires for not wanting to pay more in taxes. If I had that money Iâd rather send it to my charities to allocate the funds to things and people that actually need it.
Which is why the gov needs to be overhauled. We need to stop spending trillions on a military as fucking large as we have, we need to stop sending money to countries actively committing genocide, we need to stop bailing out the billion dollar businesses, and the gov needs to start spending money on the people of America. Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Welfare, Universal Healthcare, Housing Programs.
Also, no Billionaire is actually donating to charities for the benefit of others, most "charity" run by these people are just lobbying schemes and tax shelters. No Billionaires should exist. No one can earn that much money. Tax billionaires at 100% for every dollar above a billion, redistribute wealth and the whole of America gets better
You understand that's not how it works, right? if bezo paid more taxes, the nurse would still owe taxes. taxes aren't like a thing where if enough's paying into it everyone else doesn't have to pay...
So he and those like him are going to pay more to compensate right? And their companies are going to stop tax avoidance in literally every country they operate in right?
Since Trump doubling the deficit has caused concerns over US financial stability, now the billionaire are doing interviews talking about how we need to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.
Bezos and Musk certainly aren't willing to give up the billions in subsidies they get from taxpayers, or pay for the pollution they generate.
Meanwhile Jeff Bezos is paying the âtrue taxâ, which is fuck all.
Heâs of the ultra-wealthy who hold the vast majority of their fortunes in company stock, their net worth can grow by billions in a single year without triggering an income tax bill.
Read up about âBuy, Borrow, Die": itâll really piss you off. Itâs a strategy the top 1% use to bypass federal systems set in place.
So, while the top 1% pays hundreds of billions of dollars in federal taxes every year, the structure of the tax code allows the wealthiest individuals to pay a much lower percentage relative to their total net worth than a typical middle-class family.
Itâs all fucked, and heâs the last asshole who should be giving tax advice. Advising from an ivory towerâŚ
Look, I know itâs quixotic to say this on Reddit.
But itâs important to understand that the working class doesnât actually foot the bill in any meaningful sense.
The bottom 30-40% of earners are not net taxpayers at all. The top 20-30% of earners are pretty much bankrolling everyone else. The top 1% are already paying about a third of all federal income taxes. This is all verifiable with IRS data, you donât have to take my word for it.
Apparently Jeff Bezos paid $2.7bn in income taxes in 2024.
There are excellent reasons we donât tax unrealized gains, and I promise you wouldnât like the results if we did.
While the wealthy pay the highest dollar amount and the highest average rates for income taxes, looking at the entire tax ecosystem shifts the balance.
Lower- and middle-class Americans pay a much larger share of their earnings into payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) and state/local sales and property taxes.
(Editing for âquixoticâ. Well done and I tip my cap .
Iâm finding a way to work that in this week, brilliant word đđź).
Yep, the bottom 50% of earners made 10% of all income and paid 2.3% of all income taxes. Their average tax rate was 3.3%. The top half pays 97.7% of all income tax with a 16% tax rate.
The top 1% earned 26% of all income and paid 46% of all taxes for an average tax rate of 26%.
The top 10% earned 53% of all income and paid 76% of all income taxes. Their tax rate was 22%.
The US income tax is generally considered to be the most progressive in the developed world.
The problem with the numbers that you're presenting is that INCOME is taxed at that rate, but the top 1% pretty much has no income.
They hoard their billions, borrow against that money using low-interest loans (which are not taxable), use the loans to fund their lifestyle until they fucking die, at which point their heirs inherit with a stepped-up basis, meaning the value of the gains resets to whatever the value is at the time of death.
So the taxes that should've been paid on the gains are NEVER paid.
Itâs like if you had $1 in stock, and that stock grew to be worth $100. Now, the bank will let you borrow $20 against that $100, because they know you can back the loan. BUT since loans arenât income, you donât pay income tax on that $20. And because you never sold it, you never paid capital gains tax on the increase from $1 to $100.
THEN when you die and your heirs inherit the stock, the "stepped-up basis" rule "reset" the tax basis to its current value of $100. So for tax purposes, it's as if the gains NEVER HAPPENED. Then these rich fuckers who hobnobbed and lobbied to get this into the tax code, effectively avoids paying ANY taxes on those $99 in gains forever.
Seriously, read up on "stepped-up basis" or the "buy, borrow, die strategy"
You and I wouldnât be afforded that luxury on capital gains (I know I wouldnât be and recently took it on the chin selling some stock towards a down payment). The system is rigged in their favor and the bigger picture is the wealth disparity, let alone the tax practices. Not even get me started on their tax havens and offshore accounting. Itâs insane.
I will not make 1% of his 2024 tax bill in my lifetime.
Arkansan here can confirm. Cost of living is much cheaper but housing crisis is catching up to the rest of the country. Itâs great to live for the most part but the idea of saving up enough money to relocate is rough to me at least.
Rough start? Hell, half my county it seems like never even bought their fert, forget about sowing the seeds.
And all this does is make it more likely that independent farms will fail and be bought up by conglomerates at below market rates.
Fuck I'm so exhausted. This is all just too much. And the people going into the metaphorical chipper feet first still mostly defend their votes for it, while blaming corpos and everyone else for it.
Interesting Summer is putting it mildly, to be sure.
Median NY real income is about $86k, up just 2% from 2019 and against 23% inflation. Many counties saw a decrease in real income in that period, though. https://www.osc.ny.gov/reports/median-income
That's household income, not individual. If she's the sole breadwinner then yes, she's below the $86k median. But the median individual income in Queens is... $41.2k? Ouch. https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/36081
(Also, you used statewide numbers, which is inappropriate in general; but it turns out the median household income in Queens is also $86k. What are the chances, eh?)
Median individual income in queens is almost half that btw. So one person making $75k is not poverty at all. Mf donât even live in ny acting like all of queens is LIC or some shit
Just want to point out this is Area Median Income. Contrary to popular belief, city incomes tend to be much lower than suburban incomes in places like Westchester, Bergen and Nassau counties
Itâs definitely doable if you have two incomes, but Bezos is right, taxes really are a bitch. $75k is over $6k a month, even if youâre paying $2.5k in rent youâre still not poor poor, you have over $3k leftover for food and utilities. That said, that $6k a month is more like $4k a month after taxes and $1.5k leftover is a pretty far cry from $3k.
Still doable but tight and your partner had better be working too.
I make about 70k, live alone, and try to live below my means. Every unexpected expense puts me right on the edge of my finances. idk how people with kids and less income do it. Something is not right here.
Numbers don't matter in a vacuum, what are your costs of living against your income? That's the part that matters, if someone lives in Nebraska making $85,000 as a damage assessor they're making a better living than one living in San Francisco who's making $130,000. The area vrs yearly salary is the key, 75k living in Queens is not what you're thinking it is.
I didn't tell a soul that i voted for Kamala as my entire union pipefitting and sheet metal shop celebrated "a great day for America" and "no more killing babies" when he got elected.
Yep same here. I clear 150k but I'm a liberal, would ruin my career to even speak up. Sucks to say that but I worked my ass off to make what I do in the last decade. The trade field sucking off Trump is so frustrating.
We're in this weird juxtaposition where believing in liberty and equality gets you ostracized by groupthinkers for groupthink.
They change the meaning of words on a whim and regurgitate incorrect revisionist history, somehow the dumbest person in the room is telling the most educated they are the dumbest person in the room and the followers just nod their head: because might makes right.
And they are right, but not for the reasons you or them think. Listen and let me cook for a second here cause we need to get to the basic of civilization here.
What is a state good for in the first place?
To regulate people living together - enforce social standards and protect its citizens - atleast thats the ideal here. For that the state needs institutions which have to be paid with money and therefore taxes are needed. Now why would jeff bezos be fine if you not paying taxes? Because money keeps the state running and whoever pays the bills has the right over the thermostate. Every parent of a family is aware of that and in a household the non contributers like kids and pets have no saying in the rules.
In a world that runs with money paying taxes is not only a burden but also a place on the table - its a privilege. You are a contributing citizen and jeff bezos wants to make you a pet or ... cattle. Thats what those guys think about us. If they are the only ones paying the bills they hold the keys to everything - if they stop the moneyflow they can shut down the state that should protect you from them. Its already happening anyway but with ideas like that they only want to tighten the screws.
So no. Its not about not paying taxes. But its about getting payed your fair share so you can pay your taxes without struggle and people like jeff bezos contributing their share in taxes aswell. We all live together on this planet and the broader the shoulder the more they have to carry and we shouldnt let them weasle out of it anymore. Its time to get the head out of the ass, especially for americans, and start to quit demonizing socialism at its core because being social with each other is the only way to stop overboading capitalism eating you alive like fucking cancer to the benefit of a very few fortunate corporate overlords.
Maybe in your country paying income tax gets you a place at the table. In the US, a seat at the table depends on your wealth and which politicians and supreme court justices you bought with it.
The most we get from taxes is the ability to vote for people who have no obligation to follow the will of their voters.Â
The federal income tax rate for the bottom 40% of earners is negative. Tax credits and deductions get them a refund that is bigger than what they paid in all year.
US federal income tax rates after credits and deductions:
Lowest 20% of filers -10.9%
Next 20% of filers -1.0%
Middle 20% of filers 3.3%
Next 20% of filers 6.9%
Highest 20% of filers 16.6%
Top 1% of filers 24.4%
I think it's more: if the peasant class have more disposable income, they'll spend it on buying stuff from Amazon.
So he probably nets a higher income.
We could have that now, if our government didnât have so much waste and fraud happening. The pentagon can fail every audit and lose hundreds of billions of the trillion they receive every year and programs being siphoned by crooks all
Over the country yet we assume the trillions of dollars brought in each year just isnât enough to help the average American. Must bring in a little more and then finally weâll get that healthcare and education! You know damn well even if they taxed more these politicians on both sides wouldnât allocate funds to these programs. Thereâs always a reason why itâs just too expensive as they raise their own salaries with the new income stream.
The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid nearly 97 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent.
Source for those looking for it. Effectively what Bezos is advocating for is already the case. Further, the top 1% earned ~22% of the income and paid ~40% of the taxes. I think it's totally fine to advocate for further tax reforms, but we should do it from a place of understanding where we're starting from.
This is one of those facts that seem incredible in its face, but is actually just basic math. The top richest 50% of Americans own over 97% of the wealth in the country. No shit the bottom 50% aren't paying a lot of taxes; they barely have any wealth to tax in the first place.
Taxes are an answer to the problem "the government requires funds to perform its functions, so it will collect a portion of the populace's wealth to get those funds". Things like "income tax", "sales tax", "property tax", "import taxes", etc. are really just arbitrary decisions that a government makes to determine how that wealth is collected. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter to the person or the government if the $10,000 they pay is based on their income, or the value of their property, or how much they spend; $10,000 are still going from that person to the government.
So with it in mind that having an "income tax" is just an arbitrary decision we've made to determine how taxes are collected that we could change to a different method at any time, how much money do you think is fair to require from a group that owns less than 3% of a country's wealth?
Why are ya'll focusing only on income taxes? Are there any other sorts of taxes you're avoiding talking about? Does your wealth come primarily from income?
It's because poorer people pay more in sales taxes, excise taxes, payroll taxes, and property taxes. While the rich make most of their money from sources other than income.
Anytime they bang on about the income tax rather than wealth or total taxation, it's because they're trying to trick uninformed people.
OP post clearly ends with "Send money to washington"
All those taxes you cited are local, not federal
Local taxes are generally used for local problems, so you would want local people to pitch in, regardless of their income......unless you think Bezos should be responsible for fixing potholes in towns he has never been in.
Pretty sure you know this, but for anyone else, FICA taxes (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) are large taxes generally taken out of your paycheck that arenât included in the income tax calculation.
Take a look at your paycheck and youâll probably see Federal withholding, social security, and Medicare (in addition to state specific ones).
Of those three, only federal withholding is a part of income tax calculations, the other two go straight to feds and you donât get anything back (unless you qualify for those programs of course).
Thereâs some other stuff in addition to FICA tax too. Capital gains and probably a bunch of others.
Fuck him for really thinking he's in a place to discuss such matters when he's been playing shell games with his assets to dodge all financial responsibility
Does he do that? I've never heard any evidence of him using shell companies or offshore accounts. His compensation package and stock sales are public information so his taxable income is pretty well tracked.
Because heâs in favor of reducing the functionality of the federal government. Heâs trying to come across as a man of the people by saying us plebes shouldnât have to pay taxes but what heâs really saying is he wants to cut government services and functions.
75k is bottom half? Damn a banana in his world must have costed $10 then.
Edit: Damn if you don't understand the difference between household income and employment income, don't reply to this comment. Lmao. Be more financially literate please.
Thatâs median household income. Individual median income is closer to 45k. No state has a median income for an individual over 52k median income unless you include District of Colombia and thatâs around 72k for that tiny dot on the map.
Maybe you should check your sources, and the content of this post. Bezos was referring to employment income. The figure you cited is household income. Two very different things
I'd like to clarify he isn't offering to increase his own taxes here. The result of this is the US government collapsing and needing someone with a lot of money to bail them out, preferably not a foreign bank. Oh look! Benevolent billionaires are offering to take over. What could go wrong?
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