Yet you fail to explain or refute what I wrote.

I notice you also failed to respond to my explination of how your statement is flawed, I understand that you don't wish to accept the facts because it means you are incorrect and you don't wish to be incorrect. Once you exceed 200k those benifits you say the rich get does not exist. Congress says once you make 200k or more you don't need the breaks the poor get. It is easy to look up, since it is a public law. Not to jump onto the your retarded bandwagon but if you don't get the deduction then you have to understand simple math, $20 is more than $0. Your argument falls apart because you claim the rich are getting something they don't get and using that as your point that the tax system is unfair to the poor. If a person is paying 35% taxes they get no deductions. Next time you look up on line look up AMT alternative minimum tax, so even if you owe no taxes based on your income and deductions you have to pay the AMT which wipes out your deductions. This added tax kicks in at 200k earned income. Also, you don't get 20 cents on the dollar or 35 cents on the dollar with you deductions. you get a percentage of that 20 cents or 35 cents back not the full amount back.

I will give you an example if you make 31k a year plus you own a business IRS takes $2,900 from you. With that business if I claim that I have $10,000 in business expenses and no profit I will get back $2,900 that is 600 less than 35% if I make 75k and have 10k in business expenses and no profit I get back 7,900 dollars. If I make 200k and have 10k in business expenses and no profit I get a tax return of $500 Where is my 35%? If I make 210k and my business had 10k in business expenses and no profit, I get a tax return of $0 because my adjusted gross income is over 200k.

Since I gave no insult I hope you can answer me without insult.

Relax my friend, He can not give an example because he already has, to the best of his ability. He is repeating crap he read somewhere but does not understand it so to get by he is being as indistinct as possible in hopes of saying that you and I are too stupid to understand basic math. Read what I wrote above and you can see he does no know what he is writing about.

I can't speak for Andrew, but here's my definition of poor:

It is when you have no assets to liquidate, and -

- you can't feed yourself or your children the minimal amount necessary for healthy living.

- you can't afford minimal shelter for you and your family.

- you can't provide clean clothing that more or less fits for your children and keeps them warm and dry.

- you lack the minimal resources required to obtain better employment. This includes clothing, transportation, communications (phone, internet, fax, mail, etc)

It is not when -

- you have to take the bus to work because you can't afford a car.

- you can only afford one vacation per year.

- you have to sell cherished assets in order to take proper care of your family.

- you have to use the library computer to look for work.

- you can't afford some non-necessity of life that you would like.

- you can't afford to sustain your past habits (smoke/drink/drugs).

- you have to buy food at the grocery store, walk 1/2 mile home, cook your dinner for yourself, and clean up afterwards.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

That's pretty much a more eloquent version of what my answer would have been:

The closest I have ever been to being poor was when I shared a room in a hostel with three others while trying to find a job. And no, I didn't have a mobile phone. I went to the post office to call companies if I didn't call in person.

I am still very good friends with the hostel land lord who helped me a lot.

And my first flat mate was one of my room mates from the hostel as well.

I didn't get any government money during that time. I was too busy finding a job and didn't have time to figure out how to apply for aid.

Now THAT'S getting closer to "poor".

At least I had a bed.

Luxury!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13JK5kChbRw

I can't wait to be rich, I can buy all the things I have ever wanted but never had, friends, a mother who will claim me in public.

Your suggestion is on that caued most of Europe to have second thoughts about the government taking care of everyone. The rich people started to bail out of the country because of the high taxes. Once they lost a majority of rich people the governments could not pay for all the things they promissed. President Obama is makeing the same promisses that Europe tried and failed 3 decades ago. The real problem is that if the government took all money earned by rich people in a single year it only ammounts to 56 billion dollars. Our president has already commited us to spend 13 trillion dollars this year. Where is the money coming from to pay for it? We have reached the tipping point where the government is spending more than it makes or could possibly make and there are few countries willing to lend us the money to fill the gap. NY State raised taxes on the rich and they started moving out of the state meaning that now they don't get any money from those that left. My companies live within their means, the government should learn to do the same thing.

If Jill made $25, 000.00 then she paid zero taxes, and was returned everything she paid into the system. Sounds like she made a bad choice giving away a huge portion of her money. So you want to reward people this irresponsible?

Joe seems prudent, giving within his means, but he'll pay far more taxes anyway.

Being 2008 years old you should get it by now.

And?  A tax deduction isn't some loophole.
 

Neither.  The government didn't give either any money.

I paid 1400 Euros for dental treatments last year.

Of those 1400 roughly 50% were covered by my insurance.

The remaining 705 Euro could be deducted.

I filled out a Web form on the Irish tax office's Web site and a few days later 288 Euro appeared on my account.

That means that I was able to deduct those 705 at my 41% tax rate and ultimately overpaid taxes since I was originally taxes for income which I didn't owe taxes for (because that income went towards dentists' bills).

The tax office paid me back MY MONEY a few months after they took it from me.

At what point did the government GIVE me money?

Then who did? Without that donation the money would be used by the government to fund something (say a new road, or a bankers job), but because of that donation the government lets Joe spend it instead. Or are you just arguing semantics, that is, either that because the government hasn't sent Joe a cheque for that amount (instead prefering to make things far simpler by just netting off the amount they owe Joe against the amount Joe owes them) that they haven't given it to him, Or that even when Joe gives that money to the government it is still his not theirs, and so he can't be given what is already his and you'd instead use some other phrase to describe how he ends up with $3k more money to spend.

Regardless of what semantics you try to argue though, Joe now has ~$3k more to spend thanks to the government. Jill meanwhile gets ~$1k more to spend thanks to the government, even though they both gave the same amount of money. Joe gets more to spend as a result of the amount spent than Jill because 3>1.

I don't know why I bother trying to explain this to you when you seem to have such difficulty with even the simplist of concepts, but here goes:

You go to your local shop which offers a 'buy now, pay next week' service, and you buy $100 of food. After buying the food, you go and give $10 of it to a homeless person. The next day you go to that shop and the owner comes out, applauds you for how you helped the homeless person, and gives you $5. Now just so I can see what part of this you're not understanding, there are two scenarios. A: you tell the owner he can just put the $5 against the $100 you owe him to make things simpler, so that now you owe him $95. B: You take the $5 in cash and thank him.

Now, would you accept you have been given money in either of those situations?

and if joe DONATED THE MONEY he isn't spending it, its not his anymore.

Choosing not to take from someone as much as you COULD have taken is not the same as giving. The money was inherantly JOE's, not the Government's. You assume all money belongs to the government, and however much it lets you keep is however much it GAVE you.

It is not semantics, it is a fundamental difference.

Based on this statement I think you believe that money belongs to the government and they let us have it. In reality the money is ours, we earn it. through a social compact we agree to pay our fair share of the government in order to protect us where we can not protect ourselves. It is still our money and we send representitives to Washington in order to administer our money. They don't let us have money we let the government have money to do specific things.