Talk:Taxation in the United States

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Contents

[edit] Tax distribution — Commentary/NPOV dispute

On Dec. 9, 2006, an editor inserted commentary about the section "Tax distribution" into that section (the new material is the part after the bullets):

[edit] Tax distribution

In the United States, the Congressional Budget Office produces a number of reports on the share of all federal taxes paid by taxpayers of various income levels. Their data for 2002 shows the following: (Table 2)

  • The top 1% of taxpayers by income pay 33% of all individual income taxes, and 22.7% of all federal taxes.
  • The top 5% of taxpayers pay 54.5% of all individual income taxes, and 38.5% of all federal taxes.
  • The top 10% of taxpayers pay 67.4% of all individual income taxes, and 50% of all federal taxes.
  • The top quintile (20%) pays 82.5% of all individual income taxes, and 65.3% of all federal

This interruption is to protest the bias in these statistics, and ask that the total amount of income earned for each of these groups be listed. For example: The top 1% of taxpayers by income pay 33% of all individual income taxes, and 22.7% of all federal taxes, and earn approximately XX% of all income. One will find that the taxes paid by group is equally near the percentage of national income earned by group. As stated, there is a misperception that the top 1% to 20% of the population is paying a disproportionate amount of the taxes, yet they earn most of the national income. The misrepresentation is commonly argued on political forums, on behalf of reducing taxes for the wealthy.

The added material is a commentary/discussion about the article and should be included on this talk page, not in the article itself. I've therefore moved it here. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 01:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Postscript: Since the editor's concern seems to be that the above-mentioned section is biased, I've added the POV tag to that section. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 01:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I've tried to update this per these comments. However, we may be duplicating the section "Progressive nature of income tax" - perhaps we should combine these and maybe rename the header. Morphh (talk) 14:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Progressive/regressive nature of a tax system is tax distribution. It belongs in this section.Gmb92 07:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History split

I think this section requires a lot of expansion and is currently sufficient to start its own article titled something like Taxation history of the United States. It should cover early American history as well such as the Boston tea party. Morphh (talk) 16:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Support
  1. Morphh (talk) 16:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  2. EECavazos 02:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Oppose

[edit] Done

Since no one opposed I took the liberty of creating the article. I have not yet made a reference to this article because the separate history article requires a lot more work.EECavazos 23:38, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Excellent - Thanks! Morphh (talk) 0:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mention of Fair tax?

I was wondering if it would be appropriate to mention the FairTax as an alternative which has been proposed. Brian Pearson 00:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

There is a brief mention of it under "Federal tax reform". I'm not sure we should give it any additional weight in this article. Perhaps we could give it a brief definition, but we would likewise need to do so for the Flat tax. Morphh (talk) 13:13, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Easier said than done.:) I'd have to give it some thought. Brian Pearson 01:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Effective tax rates

As suggested earlier by another poster, I think it makes sense to combine "Progressive nature" with "Tax distribution". Progressive/regressive are general descriptions of tax distribution. Also, I want to suggest a couple of sources regarding effective tax rates. The first deals with effective federal tax rates from the Congressional Budget Office. Table 1A lists the total federal effective tax rates from 1979-2001 for 5 income quintiles and the top 10%, 5% and 1% of incomes. [[1]] A similar 2004 CBO study continued this analysis. Since it assumed expiration of various 2001 and 2003 tax act provisions, estimates for years beyond 2004 are not accurate. However, since no major changes to the tax code have taken place since 2003, 2004's numbers are reasonably accurate for this article. Table 2: [[2]]

For regressive state taxes, this study lists the estimated average effective rates in graph form. This is for the year 1996, which should be noted if included in this article. I don't see any better reference in this article that covers this topic. Figure 5, page 6 of the PDF lists the graph. [[3]] For the lowest income group, the average effective rate (U.S.) is about 12.5%. For the highest income group (top 1%), the average effective rate is 6%.

Gmb92 07:46, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major culling needed

Editor Eastlaw has pointed out that the list of taxes and fees was fairly problematic. I have deleted some of the more obviously-undocumented items. That does not mean that these taxes or "fees" don't exist. It just means that we need to limit this list to taxes -- and just to taxes that we can actually document. This still needs work. Stay tuned. Famspear (talk) 23:34, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Idea for New Article

I am considering writing an article on timing concepts in Federal income taxation and related case law. For example, the constructive receipt, economic benefit, and claim of right doctrines, an elaboration on cases regarding the cash method versus accrual method of accounting, etc. Does anyone think this would be worthwhile or appropriate for Wikipedians? I would outline the various doctrines at a high level and give some of the landmark cases in each category. Nathanpatterson 04:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you guys ought to explain ways that tax money is used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.199.175 (talk) 22:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

That would be covered under the area of government spending and United States federal budget. Morphh (talk) 14:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with editor Morphh. "Taxing" (bringing the money into the government treasury) and "spending" (appropriations, or paying the money out of the government treasury) are opposite concepts, and the "spending" side of things (how the government uses the money) should be kept separate -- with separate Wikipedia articles. Famspear (talk) 16:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Peer-review notice

I think we're close to submitting Tax protester constitutional arguments for Featured Article status. Please help in the peer-review of this article to get it ready for submission. Thanks Morphh (talk) 19:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lead section

Lead section can be expanded. Per WP:Lead section, the lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. The lead should

1. establish context;

2. summarize the most important points;

3. explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and

4. briefly describe its notable controversies, if there are any.

Per Wikipedia guidelines, the "emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources. The lead should not 'tease' the reader by hinting at but not explaining important facts that will appear later in the article. It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article." Yours, Famspear (talk) 18:22, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I left a message on the users talk as well. Morphh (talk) 18:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] POV intro tag

(After some edit conflict) The second paragraph cats a negative light on taxation by choosing examples that are favorable to their view. It's done elegantly, but it is obvious and should be rewritten or deleted. ☆ CieloEstrellado 16:31, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I removed the quote and did some copyedits. Perhaps this will address the concern. Morphh (talk) 16:30, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've removed the tag. Good job there, but there's still some hidden cry against the "government taking away our money," even if it's very subtle. ☆ CieloEstrellado 16:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I guess such would be based on the readers view regarding levels of government spending, which is a different article. We definitely need to expand the lead to summarize the article, which may help this (such that we discuss progressive aspects on income). Morphh (talk) 16:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested move

How would the editors here feel about moving this article to Tax policy of the United States to be more along the lines of the titles of other policy articles (Category:United States federal policy). The pros would be that it would give this article a more narrowly-defined scope (it seems to have grown rather large), and that it would draw the article into a framework parallel to the other policy articles. Cons: The State-specific material may need to be farmed out to another article. johnpseudo 22:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Right now, the article title parallels the tax articles of other countries (Category:Taxation by country). I prefer it the way it is based on Wikipedia guidelines (see WP:TITLE). Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature. I wouldn't think "tax policy" would be the first thought when searching for most. I would suggest turning your suggested link into a redirect, and we could then categorize the redirect (WP:CAT-R). Or perhaps there is some way to have this article list it with that name in the category. Anyway.. that's my thoughts on it. Morphh (talk) 13:45, 04 May 2008 (UTC)