Is it fair to tax rich people more than poor people?

Question

I dont think it is fair because in America everyone is supposed to be treated fairly.

Answer 1

Rich people pay less taxes. Look it up. They are only taxed on like the first 100,000 they make. A large portion of their income is tax free.

Yeah in America we are supposed to be equal....but once you educated yourself you will see the poor man fits the bill.

Answer 2

yah, the more something costs the higher tip you give, so its kinda like the opposite of that

Answer 3

No.  The people who push the agenda of taxing rich people at a higher percentage than everyone else are socialists and communists who really want to make everybody poor so that they have to rely on the government to take care of them.  Rich people are not as easy to subject to the power of the state as poor people are.  

They also forget that it's the rich people who employ almost everyone else.  If you take away the "profits" of the rich people, what is their incentive to grow their business, to hire more people, to give to all the charities and non-profit organizations that they keep running?  Did you know that even the biggest, most successful companies in the world end up reinvesting most of the money they make back into the business?  Look at the donors list of just about every charity and non-profit organization you care to name.  What do you see at the top of the list in terms of money and/or material donations?  Companies that are owned by "rich" people.  If the government keeps raising taxes on the rich people, you're going to see those donations dry up.  The government is really inefficient at taking tax money and using it to provide anything for the poor people.  There is a lot of overhead and cost associated with the government that non-profit organizations and charities could never get away with.  Remember when the Red Cross got in trouble because some of the full time staffers were giving themselves a little pay raise?  The Congress gets to give themselves a pay raise whenever they want to.  

Also, when owners of companies have to pay more taxes, they can pass on some of the cost of that on to their customers.  Higher production costs (which includes taxes) mean higher prices for customers.  Ever wonder why the cost of goods and services keeps going up?  It's partly due to the fact that companies have increasing expenses.  

If every citizen and legalized worker had to pay 5% of their income in state and federal tax combined, that would be plenty of revenue for the governments (especially if they cut some of their most wasteful programs).  As it is, millions of citizens don't pay any income taxes at all.  Their employer deducts pay from their wages and pays income tax that way.  The employee might pay a little but then gets it back in a "rebate" check later on.  They pay other taxes which might ammount to a quarter of their income but that's it.  Meanwhile, "rich" people are paying almost half their income in taxes by the time you add all the different taxes up.  If middle class and poor people had to pay as big of a percentage of their income as "rich" people do now, they'd be flat broke as far too many people don't keep money in savings and investments.

Then there is the less obvious taxes on the rich like property tax which they have to pay wether their company makes any money or not.  There have been family owned farms and ranches that have had to sell their place and go out of business (one less source of domesticly grown food too) because they didn't make enough money to pay their property taxes and the bank wouldn't loan them enough to cover it.  There's also the "death tax" which should be abolished totally.  With it, when a person inherits something, the value of that something is taxed.  Sometimes, it takes years for the survivors of the deceased to pay the inheritance taxes on what they were left.  That's why you see so many families who own a business having to set up S corporations and have company presidenst and VP's etc. on paper even though no such structure exists in practical terms within the family-run business.  All that complex figuring and paperwork is just to make it so that the owner of the business (dad, grandpa, mom etc) doesn't have to will the business and land to the family when they die.  When they die, someone else just gets elected company president.  Otherwise, they often have to sell the land and assets just to pay off the inheritance taxes.

Answer 4

I don't think so; just because they make more doesn't mean they don't deserve what they earned any less than lower-income people. I think that the people who are at poverty level should have tax breaks...it should all just be one percentage. Of course the government won't do that though, because when they see the potential to get more money, they do it.

Answer 5

yes, because the rich get rich by stealing from the poor.  

Answer 6

Fair is a relative term.

The rich are taxed proportionally higher because they are better able to pay, it's as simple as that.  This is called a progressive tax system, and almost all western countries use such a system.

The realistic and the more forward thinking among the wealthy class realize that they can give more, and that they should.  For instance, let's suppose we have two taxpayers, one of whom is making $20,000 per year, and one of whom is making $2,000,000 per year.  Surely anyone can see that taxpayer #1 has much less income (both in % terms and in real dollars) left after paying for essentials?  It follows then, that Taxpayer #2 can pay more, without impacting his way of life.  

I'm well above the median income where I live, and so I pay more than the hourly guys who work for me.  I don't have a big problem with that.

  

Answer 7

I'm not sure just what "fair"means here, but it's certainly practical.

And I remember things like freedom of speech and religion  in the Constitution, and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all men created equal, in the Declaration of Independence, but don't remember the line about everyone being treated fairly.

Answer 8

No, the rich work hard and take many risks in order to acquire wealth.  Ninety percent of those considered wealthy actually earned, rather than inherited their incomes.   The money rich people spend and invest greatly jump start the economy and enables them to provide jobs for the rest of us.  The top five percent of households already pay sixty percent of taxes to the US government.  Many politicians want to tax the upper class even more.  To do this would be a great mistake and further decimate our already weak economy.  As it stands now, the current tax system punishes people for working hard and therefore must be reformed as it does not treat people fairly.

Answer 9

no everyone should pay the same percent of their income. You shouldn't punish rich ppl for being successful.