Everyone should pay their fair share in income taxes

Amen! to all of the above!

If an E5 with 2 kids making less than a base pay of $30,000 a year is only getting $465 back, they are missing out on tax credits somewhere. Sgt pay, including BAH would be about $350 more a month than my husband makes (averaging out BAH), putting them at roughly $46,000. (still severely under paid for the job IMO) I know our tax liability is 0, we get a large refund check. The first year we filed after he enlisted I did our taxes, then paid someone because I thought I made a mistake. I didn't. We even got money back from the state. Totally floored. Some people justify the large return as being okay because their income is low. Personally, I would prefer the Government pay my husband better.

The cash that a Sergent with four years in service is around $29,000 but they do get a housing allowance and clothing allowance, not much but they do receive it, so I estimated the total to be around $35,000. A Sergent married with 2 children taking the standard deductions and exemptions with no other income would still owe $1035 in Federal Taxes. Now the way our tax system works the government takes out more money than what is needed. This is a very cleaver way of making people feel good about paying taxes. Most people will tell you the difference in what they paid in or what they got back. In this example the Sergent may have had $1500 withheld from his salary and after filing will get back from the government $465 which is always nice. However if the the amount withheld was less than the tax owed he would have to pay more in in taxes. If the government withheld $850 the Sergent would owe the government $185 making it seem as if he paid $185 in taxes. \When President Roosevelt (FDR) started the tax withholding from each pay check it was to make it easier for people to pay taxes. Before that people had to write out a check to the government each quarter to pay their estimated tax bill, just like small business and self employed have to do today. If you ask a person how much they paid in Federal or State income tax they will tell you what they got back or what they had to pay in not what their real tax was.

What you guys are missing is that with 2 kids, he gets 1k credit per kid, so he would get back an additional $2000 credit, which makes it that he paid in $1500 and got back about $2500...so he actually would receive back more than what he paid in. This also applies to welfare recepiants that if they actually do have some kind of job, and makes more than something like $12,000 for the year, he/she would get a credit of $1000 per child in tax credit add to the refund.

In the US the top 25% of the wage earners, those making about $250,000 or more, pay 63.9% of the taxes while the bottom 50% pay 2.25% of the taxes. In this country about 1/2 of the people pay little or no taxes and that is the lowest income earners.

In the Philippines those who are belong to low earners are tax exempted such as farmers who doesn't have land and also people living in the rural areas.

My discussion was in response to the DNC Tuesday night of the chants everyone pay their fair share - which is only the rich pay more. What is fair about a person who works a few weeks and then gets the earned income tax credit of $4000. As to Gov Romney paying the same amount as a poor person is wrong. He might pay the same rate but not the same amount. I agree our tax code is not fair the harder you work and make more the more you are punished. You invest hoping to make some money for the future only to find out that you are taxed on all your gains but if you lose money you are limited to what you can deduct. Why shouldn't you get a break for having children, we reward welfare people who have more children.

Bob, if it is fair to give tax breaks for having kids, getting married, buying a vacation home, than why not being poor? What isn't fair is that once you get up into the millions your tax rate goes down, because of accounts. The person that gets screwed the most in our tax system is the single person who doesn't own a house, or have kids, and makes over $20,000 a year. His actually tax rate is around 40% or more depending on your state. The sad part is that he is taxed more than the richest people in this country, and makes less than what they do in a minute. According to Romney's tax plan he wants to end the capital gains tax. Romney was paid via capital gains, it would save him personally millions every year. The reason we gave tax breaks for marriage, and kids is both a religious, and tax base purpose. It is another example of big government that right wingers claim to denounce.

Debater you need to look at the tax code and get your facts correct. the tax rate on $20,000 is not close to 40%, more like 10 to 15 percent. 10% goes up to 8700, 15% goes up to 35,350, 25% goes to 85,650, and 28% goes to 178.650. Add on 7.5% Social security, and 5% state, and 2.5 medicare, the person at the worse would be in the 27.2% tax range, but with a deduction of 12,500 for head of house hold, so he is paying only on $7,500. So 750 for fed, about 500 state, 500 Social Security, 200 for Medicare. Which is a total of 1950, which is slightly less than 10% of his earning on taxes. So make sure you get the facts correct here debater. What is not fair, many can go on welfare and make more money than this poor young man. The other thing, that this young man, if he has any brain in his body should be making at least $35,000 $40,000. So if he isn't he needs his head examined. There is some instances that like my son who maked only $20,000, but it is a special instance because he is going to school full time, and working a little during school and is doing internships during the summer. With his deductions, he paid only about $400 total. But he will be making 100k when he graduates in a year.

It kind of defeats the purpose.