but, the media that this wasn’t happening…
But I was reliably informed by the media that this wasn’t happening… pic.twitter.com/MYUNbCzty1
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 16, 2024
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But I was reliably informed by the media that this wasn’t happening… pic.twitter.com/MYUNbCzty1
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 16, 2024
More From New York Post:
“Look, folks, you know how many billionaires we have in America today? One thousand. You know what their average rate — tax rate — federal tax rate is? Federal tax rate is 8.5 percent. Raise your hand if you’d trade your tax rate for 8.5 percent. I’m serious. Think about this. There’d be $40 billion raised if they even pay 25 percent.” — President Biden, remarks in Raleigh, N.C., Jan. 18
There are some “facts” that Biden likes to recite in almost every speech. In the past year, in more than 30 appearances, the president has referred to billionaires paying about 8 percent in federal income taxes. He said it in his last State of the Union address, and odds are he will say it again when he addresses Congress in March. The line is a key part of his argument to impose a minimum 25 percent tax on all taxpayers with wealth greater than $100 million. That would raise about $360 billion over 10 years, the administration estimates. But, if you check Treasury Department calculations for what the richest Americans already pay in taxes, you would see that the top 1 percent pay in excess of 20 percent in income taxes and more than 30 percent in all federal taxes. Even if you drill down to the top 400 wealthiest taxpayers — data that was publicly available on an annual basis until President Donald Trump killed the report — they paid an effective tax rate of 23.1 percent in 2014. These taxpayers — with $127 billion of income — that year paid $29.4 billion in income taxes, or more than 2 percent of all income taxes, the IRS said. That’s more than the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers combined.
Here’s the funny thing: Biden’s 8 percent estimate is derived from that same tax data on the top 400 taxpayers. So what’s going on? The president is describing a tax system that he wishes existed — not the system in place.
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