President Obama Paid Only 18.4% of his Income in Taxes: Why Should You Pay More?

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obama biden

Resolved: No American citizen shall be required to pay federal income taxes at a rate higher than the country’s millionaire president pays.

Let’s call it the Alternative Maximum Fairness Tax: Calculate your current tax rate, compare it to the president’s and pay the lower of the two.

The White House admitted in a Friday afternoon news dump, of course that President Obama paid only an 18.4 percent effective federal income tax rate on his adjusted gross income last year of $608,611. The highest income-tax rate last year was 35 percent (and has now increased to 39.6 percent, thanks to the fiscal cliff tax hike). Once again, the president piously demanded that “the wealthiest Americans should pay their fair share” and yet, in the very same paragraph, the multimillionaire president admitted to paying less than half the standard rate for his income bracket.

If that weren’t enough hypocrisy, Mr. Obama once again called for the so-called “Buffett Rule” of raising taxes on high earners at the same time that he admitted to breaking the rule by paying lower taxes than Warren Buffett’s secretary. This president then had the audacity to claim that he believes in “protecting families making under $250,000 from seeing their taxes go up.” I suppose the operative word there is “seeing.” President Obama is clearly fine with hiking your taxes so long as you don’t see it happen. That’s why he cleverly hid 20 separate tax hikes on families making under $250,000 inside Obamacare.

To add insult to dishonesty, Mr. Obama’s 18 percent tax rate is almost half the standard rate that one of those families earning just under $250,000 faces, which is 33 percent. Is the president aware that his teleprompter has been running around saying that in order for all Americans to have a fair shot, it’s imperative that “everyone plays by the same set of rules”?

Mr. Obama’s teleprompter evidently has gone rogue. It made another audacious statement at its 2012 State of Union Address: “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom.” Fine. Let’s force the president to live up to that ideal or at least expose the Democrats as the hypocrites they are. Here’s how:

Whenever Mr. Obama and the Democrats attempt to burden current or future Americans with higher taxes or higher debt, Republicans should add the Alternative Maximum Fairness Tax amendment to it. Fiscal cliff. Debt ceiling. You name it. Add the amendment that says no American citizen shall be required to pay a federal income tax rate higher than the president’s and dare the Democrats to oppose it. Force them to defend the indefensible.

Democrats claim that the rich should pay their “fair share.” OK. Let’s flesh out exactly what really is fair. Is it fair that General Electric paid zero federal taxes on $14 billion income in the same year its CEO served as a close adviser to the president? Is it fair that crony companies like AIG and Solyndra received hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money as their executives kicked hundreds of thousands of dollars back to Mr. Obama’s campaign? Is that fair?

Is it fair that a president whose income is well into the top 1 percent of earners he derides pays a lower tax rate than the families he promised to protect from higher taxes right before he raised them? Then what is fair? Assuring Americans that they will never be forced to pay a higher income-tax rate than their multimillionaire president. That’s fair. That is undeniably fair.

Of course, if fairness is what we seek, then there is a much better way to achieve it.

A flat income tax is fair. If someone earns 10 times what you earn, he pays 10 times the taxes you pay. That’s fair. If someone earns half what you earn, he pays half the taxes you pay. What’s not fair about that? Further, eliminate loopholes that the government uses to bend your behavior to their liking and that the wealthy exploit to avoid paying higher taxes, and the system would become fairer still.

The president and the Democrats are enormously vulnerable on matters of fairness because of their flagrant hypocrisy. Their government-centered society itself corporate welfare, bank bailouts, Obamacare, etc. is inherently unfair precisely because it chooses winners and losers, or more accurately, friends and enemies. It unavoidably creates separate sets of rules for separate groups of Americans. If the current Republicans cannot expose the fundamental unfairness of Barack Obama and stop it, then let’s replace them with champions of liberty and fairness who can.

Source: Dr. Milton Wolf

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14 COMMENTS

  1. What did Romney pay? If you paid FEDERAL taxes higher than 18.4% please say so. One more thing, Obama is on record saying he wants his own taxes to increase. Finally, where was this kind of rhetoric when Bush was president? I highly doubt he paid north of 18.4%. Also, Romney’s “charitable donations” were tithing to the Mormon church. Real humanitarian that guy. He usually pays no tax at all. He did for one year because he was running for president. Why do you think he’d only release one year?

    • What difference does it make what Romney paid. He lost and is now a private citizen. It is Obama that made such a stink over Romney paying less than Warren Buffett’s secretary. Now Obama is caught for paying less of a percentage than Warren Buffett’s secretary. You dems are hypocrits and your leader is as full of crap as a thanksgiving turkey.

    • Nobody should pay in income tax a percentage greater than that paid by the President. Now that’s not only fair, but equitable. The squirrel in the White House owes the taxpayers of this country one hell of a huge apology.

      • Broken record. Re read my article. Did Obama write the tax code? Has he asked for his taxes to increase? Just more blind hatred.

        • I agree with you on this one. Neither Mitt Romney, Warren Buffet, or President Obama wrote the tax code. I also think they have all three filed their taxes within the laws. The President of course did make a fuss about the net percentage that Romney paid (14% or so) during the election like he was some sort of a usury thief so I think the recent news about the President’s net rate is hilarious. All are free to make a large gift to the US Treasury if they really believe the laws are unjust and they should pay more. I won’t be holding my breath for any of these three to write a check to the treasury out of guilt for paying a low tax rate.

          • If they make a large gift to the US Treasury, as you suggest, they will then take that amount as a charitable contribution on the following year’s tax return

            • So be it. That would be much preferable to getting a deduction for donating it to the Mormon church or the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

  2. This article compares apples to oranges in 2 sentences. Obama’s effective rate (total) vs. the marginal rates (35%). These are 2 DIFFERENT comparisons. Talk about bias.

    • Indeed. Based on a little Google-Fu, it looks like the average effective federal tax rate for U.S. in 2009 was around 11-12%. That jives with what I filed for this year’s taxes, as well. FWIW, the Bravo family doesn’t make quite as much as Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama…

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