Pay Your Fair Share
The predictable refrain popped up again at last week’s State of the Union/campaign for re-election speech—making the rich “pay their fair share” in taxes.
I agree…the so-called rich are not paying their fair share…they’re paying more than their fair share.
Let’s say you make $1,000, and the tax rate is 15%. That means you pay $150.
If you double that income, and make $2,000, with the tax rate being 15%, you would pay more than if you only made $1,000…double that amount, in fact, $300.
Let’s up that by a factor of 10, and you make $20,000; now you pay a lot more, $3,000.
So the more dollars you make, the more dollars you pay. That would be a fair share, with everyone paying the same rate.
But that’s not how our system operates. The more money you make, the higher percentage of tax you pay. You work hard, you earn more money…and your reward is to have the government take a higher percentage of it away from you, than if you made less.
That’s hardly an incentive to succeed, and hardly fair.
So the next time one of these opportunistic politicians says the “rich” should “pay their fair share”…ask how they define “rich”…and why making those who earn more money pay a higher percentage is somehow fair.
You might be surprised at how little money you have to make to be considered “rich” in their never-ending desire for more tax dollars…and further surprised that they cannot give you a good rationalization for making those who earn more money, pay a higher percentage.
I’m all for establishing fairness in the tax system. But that’s not what you’ll get under those success-punishing proposals.
