Our left-wing tax blogger friends James Maule and Linda Beale avidly support the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Together, Maule and Beale have written dozens of posts about out how middle-class conservatives – tea partiers, in particular – have been victimized by right-wing lies about taxes.
Well, the folks at Daily Intel have polled 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters and, among other things, asked them the following question:
What is the top marginal income tax rate of the richest 1 percent of Americans?
Here’s the result:
30% said the top tax rate is between 0% and 10%
32% said the top tax rate is between 10% and 25%
26% said they didn’t know
There you have it, folks. The result of left-wing lies about taxes.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 JG Larvan // Oct 20, 2011 at 2:39 am
Unfortunately, this is also true for the rest of the people outside the US.
2 Peter // Oct 21, 2011 at 9:32 am
JG,
There are varying degrees of ignorance. These occupy wall streeters are on the extremely ignorant end of the spectrum.
3 Jim Maule // Oct 21, 2011 at 2:37 pm
The richest one percent are NOT the one percent with the highest incomes. Many of the super-rich arrange their tax shelters, offshore cash stashing, and other gimmicks to reduce their marginal rates to way below the nominal stated rate. And many of the people among the top one percent of income earners are NOT among the richest one percent. Seems to me that not being able to distinguish between richness (wealth) and income (some measure of change in wealth) is per se ignorance of the highest order. Surely the fault of the question designer (in all fairness, Peter didn’t write the question), but, seriously, why not scrutinize the question first before jumping to conclusions about the responses? Those answers are much closer to the truth than the rich wish to admit.
4 Peter // Oct 21, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Jim,
Surely, you aren’t claiming that these occupy Wall Streeters are well-informed about taxes.
In any case, we all want to minimize our taxes. The rich, the middle class and the poor.
When I benefit from a tax law it’s merely good tax planning. When the other guy benefits from a tax law, he is taking advantage of a loophole.
You might as well criticize middle-class people for using the mortgage interest gimmick and poor people for exploiting the EITC gimmick.
5 Occupy Wall Streeters are Ignorant About Taxes | Free Tax Return Info // Oct 29, 2011 at 11:46 pm
[...] Our left-wing tax blogger friends James Maule and Linda Beale avidly support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Together, Maule and Beale have written dozens of posts about out how middle-class conservatives – tea partiers, in particular – have been victimized by right-wing lies about taxes. Well, the folks at Daily Intel have polled 50 Occupy [...] Tax Lawyer’s Blog [...]