Taxing the "Rich" at 100% Won't Balance the Budget
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The federal government can confiscate all of the taxable income of the “rich” and it wouldn’t be enough to balance the budget. Stated another way, a tax rate of 100% on the millionaires and billionaires wouldn’t provide enough money to balance the federal budget.
I’ve heard this before on talk radio, however it was only recently where I saw this statistic in print. The paragraphs below where part of a Wall Street Journal article (op-ed) published on January 4, 2012. This article was written by Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Here is what Mr. Mitchell had to say:
First, there aren't enough wealthy people to finance big government. According to IRS data from before the recession, when we had the most rich people with the most income, there were about 321,000 households with income greater than $1 million, and they had aggregate taxable income of about $1 trillion. That's a lot of money, but it wouldn't balance the budget even if the government confiscated every penny—and if it did, how much income do you suppose would be available in year two?
Second, higher tax rates don't raise as much revenue as expected. Upper-income individuals are far more likely to rely on interest, dividends and capital gains—and it is much easier to control the timing, level and composition of capital income, so as to avoid exposing it to the tax man.
This doesn't mean that those on the left won't push for class-warfare tax increases—they will. But their main motive will be politics, not raising revenue.
These paragraphs were excerpted out of Mr. Mitchell’s article which was titled, “Will the Republican Party Hand the Left a VAT Victory?” (VAT is value added tax). In his article Mr. Mitchell criticizes Mitt Romney and others in the Republican Party for considering the implementation of a value added tax as a means to finance government. Click here to view the entire article.
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