ALL THAT CRAP ABOUT PAYING ONE’S FAIR SHARE IS JUST THAT, CRAP!!!

When it comes to the topic of income taxes, we’re always hearing from the Democrats about the importance of everyone paying their “fair share.”  But rarely do we ever hear anyone, Democrat or Republican, explain exactly what one’s fair share might be.  But I have a very hard time believing that ANYONE’S fair share should be zero.  And yet, of the 150,493,263 filers who submitted individual income tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service for the 2015 tax year, only 99,040,729 paid any income tax at all.  So it would seem that some folks’ share is more ‘fair’ than others.

And together those Americans paid a record $1,457,891,441,000 in total income taxes, for an average of $14,720 per taxpayer.  The other 51,452,534, or about 34 percent of all filers, did not pay a penny.  Their average income tax payment was $0.  This is a fundamental divide in the American tax system.  On one side are those who do pay taxes; on the other, those who don't.  But the divide gets worse because there were 30,417,609 filers who while they did not pay any income taxes they still managed to receive $89,614,869,000 in cash back from the federal government.

In other words, those folks essentially received $89,614,869,000 in ‘free’ money.  We know this because the IRS tells us so.  The IRS calls this nearly $90 Billion in cash that the federal government paid to tax-return filers who paid no taxes the “refundable portion” of “refundable credits.”  They explained it in their report on the individual income taxes it collected for 2015 that, “Refundable credits were broken out into three parts: the portion used to offset income tax before credits, the portion used to offset all other taxes, and the refundable portion.”  Typical IRS mumbo-jumbo.

This IRS report said, “In total, taxpayers claimed $105.3 billion in refundable tax credits.” Adding, “Of this, $5.7 billion was applied against income taxes and $10.0 billion against all other taxes. The remaining $89.6 billion in refundable credits was refunded to taxpayers.”  That is to say it was “refunded” to “taxpayers” who paid no income taxes.  And this was not a boon for the “rich.”  According to data published in the report, 27,786,931, or about 91 percent, of the 30,417,609 tax-return filers who did get a “refundable portion” had an adjusted gross income of less than $40,000.  

So who was it that actually ended up paying the taxes the federal government needed in order to send that $89,614,669,000 to those 30,417,609 who paid no income tax at all?  One major contributor was a group that the IRS refers to as “married persons filing jointly.”  In 2015, again according to the IRS report, 54,294,820 belonged to this group, with 41,551,043 joining the side who did pay taxes, and 12,743,777 joining the side who did not.  Thus, while 34 percent of all filers paid no income taxes, only 24 percent of married couples filing jointly paid no income taxes. 

The 41,551,043 married couples filing jointly who did pay income taxes accounted for only 28 percent of all 150,493,263 filers.  But they made up about 42 percent of the 99,040,729 filers who did pay income taxes.  More tellingly, of the record $1,457,891,441,000 in total income taxes the IRS collected for tax year 2015, married couples filing jointly paid $1,040,684,097,000 of it, or about 71 percent.  So, married couples filing jointly constituted only 42 percent of filers who actually paid income taxes, but they paid 71 percent of the income taxes.

These 41,551,043 taxpaying married couples paid an average of about $25,046 in federal income taxes in 2015.  Now, some may say: But there are two people in a married couple who file jointly; of course they should pay more taxes than a single person.  But did single people filing tax returns pay half as much as married couples? The IRS says 71,086,947 single persons filed tax returns in 2015.  Of these, 23,345,062, or 33 percent, paid no income tax.  The 47,741,885 who did, paid $326,342,729,000.  That’s an average of about $6,836 per taxpaying single person. 

At that rate, it would take 3.66 taxpaying singles to surrender to the federal government the same income tax as one taxpaying married couple.  The bottom line here is that the federal government is financially dependent on income tax-paying married couples who jointly file their tax returns, and it has made 30,417,609 filers who pay no income taxes dependent on government by handing them $89,614,669,000 in a single year.  It’s very little that seems to be all that fair about this arrangement, but that said there seems to be no one the least bit interested in changing it.

And unfortunately, the recently passed tax bill does nothing to correct any of this.  It still pays $1400 refunds to the many welfare loafers who don’t pay any taxes, because they don't work and don't own any house/land so they don't pay any property taxes, which support the schools who feed their fatherless kids with free government cheese and hands them the latest laptop on which to play computer games, while they watch cable TV in their taxpayer funded apartments.  And mommy is still allowed to vote for the politician who promises her the most ‘free’ stuff because she's ‘entitled.’

So work harder all you married, responsible people, the ‘poor’ are depending on you to give them all they have and never worked for.  But hey, it would seem that that is what has now become the new normal.  After all, why would any of those who have grown rather accustomed to their free ride EVER vote for anyone who talked about having them actually pay their fair share instead of mooching off the rest of us.  Plus the Democrats now have folks thoroughly convinced that they are entitled to their free ride because they are somehow to be considered as victims of an unfair society.    

And lastly, it was shortly before the Senate passed the new tax bill 51-48, that we heard from one of the nuttier leftwing kooks in the Senate, on the Democrat side, Chris Murphy, who made the claim that the Republicans “will probably lose the House and the Senate” in 2018 because of the Republican tax reform bill.  And Murphy said “absolutely,” Democrats will try to overturn the tax legislation if they do regain control of Congress in the midterm elections.  So as far as I’m concerned that’s but one more reason on an already very long list of many why not to vote Democrat!