E
Perhaps if Warren Buffett didn't shelter his income and take deductions and write-offs, he would be paying more in taxes.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Was anyone going to point out that, if Obama gets his way, her taxes will go UP???
aps45819
24/7 Single Dad
Reported to be about $300K + a year
That's the story I head - that she makes a fairly enormous salary to begin with.
kom526
They call me ... Sarcasmo
Him and O'Malley have been brainstorming together again I guess.
OBTW I do believe that our boy MOM thinks 100k a year income is the new rich. I vaguely recall somebody on here saying something along the lines of,
'when will it be decided that 150k isn't rich enough? How long before 100k is the new rich? 75K?'
I'm sorry, EFF that I'm not sorry, 150k combined two earner income is not rich, it IS middle class! If any of those butt monkeys in Annapolis or DC had to hold a REAL EFFIN job and deal with REAL EFFIN life then they would see how far 100-150k a year does or does not go. Especially in states like NY, CA and MD.
Tilted
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Pretty well paid for a secretary, yes; but not necessarily a huge salary. The 35.8% that was claimed (either by Mr. Buffett or by Mrs. Bosanek, I can't recall which) accounted for all taxes paid (i.e. income tax, employee-share payroll tax, and employer-share payroll tax). And it applied to her taxable income, not to her total income.
I don't know how she files, but if she files as married filing separately, that would point to a taxable income in the area of $80,000 - maybe an actual income in the $100,000 range (though that's pretty hard to know with much precision and accuracy). If she and her husband file jointly, we'd need to know his income to have a decent idea of what kind of taxable income (for her) that rate points to. It could be much higher or much lower.
It would actually surprise me to learn that she was only making $100,000 or so a year. I'd have expected that, as Mr. Buffett's secretary, she was making more (and maybe she is).
Tilted
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They've always been considered taxes because they are taxes. The original law referred to them as such:
The taxes collected from some people are used to pay benefits to other people, and were always intended to be. You can think of them as contributions to some extent because the amount of the monthly benefits that you yourself may receive at some point - if and when you meet the criteria in then-existing law - is indirectly tied to the amount of taxes you pay (though Congress could change that if it saw fit to). But you aren't paying into your own account and you don't have property rights to those 'contributions', or the future benefits that you might receive, as you would with, e.g., a 401K. If and when you receive benefits they will be funded by taxes collected from other people. The Social Security program is and always has been a pay-as-we-go system of income transfer. It represents taxes and benefits more so than contributions and withdrawals.
Tilted
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The 17.4% rate that he referred to applied to his taxable income, not to his AGI or total income. So, deductions and write-offs are not the reasons that rate is so low (for my part, I don't happen to consider it as low, I think it's rather irrelevant what the rate is). That rate is with regard to what's still left after such things are taken out. If he were accounting for deductions and such (i.e. income before they came out), his rate would be even lower.
Bigger picture, the main reasons he doesn't pay more in personal income taxes are (1) he hasn't taken most of his accumulated wealth as income. That wealth has been left in companies. On paper he's worth many billions of dollars, but most of that reflects asset values - assets that he hasn't sold or otherwise monetized. If and when he does - if and when that money becomes available to him personally - there will be taxes to be paid on it. It seems he intends to give a lot of it away rather than collecting it himself, which means he won't pay taxes on it. I would point out though that the corporations that still have or represent that wealth have been paying their own income taxes on its accumulation. And (2), even with regard to the income he has taken - which is relatively small compared to his on-paper wealth - he pays a lower rate on most of it than is paid on wage income (above a certain level) because that's how our tax system is set up (and should be, in my view).
Tilted
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Are you referring to her income taxes (including payroll taxes) or are you referring to some other taxes that President Obama intends to raise? As far as I'm aware, we don't know what she makes in a year. It's quite possible based on what has been claimed by Mr. Buffett that she makes $100,000 or so. Do we think that President Obama getting his way would mean income taxes going up for people earning at that level?
(She may make more than that, and frankly I would have thought that she did, but Mr. Buffett's statements don't give us reason to believe that she does.)
Tilted
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The article that I read that suggested that something like that must be the case, based on what Mr. Buffett claimed, was misguided (I was going to say nonsense, but opted to be nice
). The author based his analysis on something that Mr. Buffett didn't claim - I suppose he was either just pretending that Mr. Buffett meant something other than what Mr. Buffett said, or he hadn't bothered to figure out what Mr. Buffett actually said. Further, the author made faulty logical assumptions - significant (and I would think obvious) ones.Mrs. Bosanek may make $1 million / year for all I know, but what Mr. Buffett has claimed doesn't point to that being the case.