The Political Voices of Women

It seems the questions about healthcare always comes down to, who really “deserves” it, and who should pay for it?  Here is my take…

Where do your taxes go?  Is too much going to help people who can’t or won’t help themselves?  Let’s check it out and see…

This is from National Priorities.org…

Ok – To make this a little easier to understand, I’m going to use $100 as the amount of taxes we break-down to see where they are going.  However, anyone can go to this site and put their actual number in and get a specific breakdown for themselves.

So, let’s check this out.  For every $100 dollars you spend in income taxes, this is where the money goes…

Of the $100 you paid in taxes:

• $42 goes to Past and Current Military
• $22 goes to Health
• $10 goes to Interest on Non-Military Debt
• $9 goes to Anti-Poverty Programs
• $4 goes to Education, Training & Social Services
• $4 goes to Government & Law Enforcement
• $3goes to Housing & Community Development
• $3 goes to Environment, Energy & Science
• $2 goes to Agriculture, Commerce and Transportation
• $1 goes to International Relations

So, 22 dollars of 100 goes to Health ($458 billion) is the federal funds portion of all health spending by the federal government, including the federal funds spending on Medicare.

And, 9 dollars of 100 goes to Anti-Poverty Programs ($179.4 billion) includes federal funds outlays on the sub-function areas food and nutrition assistance ($54.5 billion) and other income security. Other income security includes Supplemental Security Income ($38.5 billion) which provides cash assistance to disabled, elderly and blind who have very low incomes; payments where Earned Income Tax Credit exceeds tax liability ($38.3 billion); Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ($16.9 billion); payments where child credit exceeds tax liability ($16.2 billion); foster care and adoption assistance ($6.6 billion); child care spending and a variety of other small programs for children and families.

And, 4 dollars of 100 to Education, Training and Social Services ($90.6 billion) includes all federal funds outlays on the function area of the same name which includes the following subfunction areas: elementary, secondary, and vocational education, higher education, and research and general education aids, training and employment, other labor services, and social services.

And, 3 dollars of 100 goes to Housing and Community Development ($69.2 billion) includes all federal funds outlays defined by the federal government as housing assistance ($39.7 billion), and the function area of community and regional development ($29.5 billion).

Most of our tax dollars (52 dollars of 100) are going to the Iraq war and the military…

Cost of the Iraq War…

• • $4,681 per household.
  • $1,721 per person.
  • $341.4 million per day.

You can go here to see what the Iraq war is costing your community.

So, do we pay too much in taxes, YES.  But, it’s not because we are compassionately providing some of our tax dollars to services for the sick, impoverished, and the hungry…It’s because the average tax payer is being forced to pay more in taxes because our government is letting multi-million/billion/trillion dollar corporations avoid paying taxes.  

Don’t be mad about how much of your tax dollar is going to help needy Americans…Be mad about all the tax dollars that are not being collected by corporations making millions and billions and trillions each year that could be reducing your taxes and subsidizing programs that could be helping the needy among us even more than we already do (which isn’t enough).  This report does not even include all the millions in tax credits our government is giving out to huge corporations (such as oil), or corporate welfare.  This is were the anger needs to be directed, not at each other.

From Marketplace…

Lemme get your reaction to something here for a second. If I told you there was a report out today showing two thirds of all Americans didn’t pay any income taxes, would you be surprised? Outraged, maybe? If you are, calm down. There’s no report saying that at all. But there is a study out today from the Government Accountability Office saying something similar. It finds that between 1998 and 2005, two thirds of companies in this country had at least one year where they didn’t pay any federal income tax. So, back to the outrage. Where is it?

(AP) Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO’s estimate.

“It’s shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called “S” corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

“Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code,” Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren’t paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

*Here is another interesting site on where your tax dollars are going, and how the government is trying to deceive the public about the real numbers.