Re:Show HN: Effects of House and Senate Bill on California R...
by learc83 on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @09:44PM
(#15867201)
Let's say a person makes most of their income from exporting equipment to Europe. Are you going to subtract the value they receive from the US Navy protecting shipping lanes?
What about the value the owner of a retail store gets from the interstate system?
Only counting direct benefits in this calculation is absurd.
Tax breaks and one's total tax obligation are two different things.
>(Also, lots of non-rich people pay taxes, even if you only mean personal income tax.)
A lot of people think they pay taxes, but they don't. And we'd need to define rich to really reach an agreement on the truthfulness of that statement. According to the CBO [1] (table 1 on page 31), households in the lower three quintiles of income are not net tax payers at the federal level. The gap in what they pay and what they receive in services is large enough that it offsets state and local taxes.
Reviewing the table I referenced above, I would agree that lots of non-rich people pay taxes. But the majority of non-rich people do not.
[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...