[Fian]

OK, I will agree that everyone does pay other types of taxes. You could also have mentioned the gas tax as well (and probably the employer side taxes as well). So long as the cost of Social Security don't decrease, I don't see a reason to decrease the Social Security tax (in fact with the prescription drug benefit maybe we should be thinking about expanding it). In my opinion, the Poor/Middle Class should pay Social Security tax as it is a benefit that they are receiving, just like I paid into a 401k plan for my retirement as well. One other reason that social security and gas taxes have not been discussed in a reduction is that they haven't been raised recently, unlike income tax. In a lot of ways, Bush's tax cut is a repeal of Clinton's tax hike, who IIRC, placed the lion's share of the tax increase on the "rich." So this is the way it always seems to work. On a tax increase, most of the tax increase is placed on the rich. On a tax refund, people complain if most of the tax increase goes to the rich. As a result, the difference between the wealthy at 39% and the poor at 10% has become severe (forgive me if I have the tax brackets wrong). And with inflation people keep getting pushed up to higher and higher tax brackets.

Bottom line: If we like to raise taxes against the rich, then we should also reduce their taxes when we are looking at a tax refund.