[rextorres]

[quote]Originally posted by geoschmo:

Actually Rex payroll tax doesn't show up on your pay stub. What you see there is withholding. The majority of working taxpayers get some portion of that back at the end of the year in the form of a tax refund.

And saying most people that work make less then 25,000 is not technically accurate. According to the IRS statistics for 2002, most people make more then 25,000 a year. Out of 129,444,947 individual income tax returns filed only 42% made less then 25,000 a year.

If you want to throw out those more well off and just look at those under 100,000, the numbers are almost equal with slightly more that made less then 25K. But this doesn't really tell you how well off these people are. When you consider that these are IRS statistics and many married couples file separatly and many teens living at home working part or full time jobs have to file also.

Using U.S. Census Beauro statistics you get a clearer picture. According to them only 29.3% of housholds made less then 25,000, and 59.2% made between 25,000 and 100,000. The median household income is 43,057.

Geo:

I am looking at the census statistics you linked to and it says the median income for individuals is $25,839 and the majority of families make less than $50K I am assuming a family is most likely at least two adults.

I can't find where you got the IRS figures from the posting you placed, but let's say it is 42% that is still the largest amount of workers by tax bracket. This is the point of the argument - they are the largest percentage of workers and they didn't get any real tax cut.

When I said payroll tax - I meant FICA and SSI - the amount is ~8% and - I don't mean to sound snide - has appeared on every check stub I've received - and that is not refunded.

AJT

[ September 17, 2003, 20:03: Message edited by: rextorres ]