John McCain: "Many Americans are not paying taxes at all"

By: Lowell
Published On: 9/16/2008 5:08:18 PM


Besides being completely false (everyone pays sales taxes, the payroll tax, and many other taxes), this should go over real well with the anti-tax wing of the Republican Party, not to mention the millions of Americans who are struggling in the Bush/McCain economy right now.  Great political ear, John!


Comments



He omitted the word "CORPORATIONS" (hereinva - 9/16/2008 5:54:25 PM)
From the GAO August 2008

August 13, 2008 (AP)

Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998-2005, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office.  About 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. also avoided corporate taxes during the same period.  Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales.  More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies (66.7%) paid no income tax.  About 25% of large U.S. corporations -- those with at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts -- did not pay corporate taxes.  The GAO analyzed data from the IRS, examining samples of corporate returns from 1998-2005.  For 2005, it examined 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business inside the United States.  Tax figures since 2006 were not examined.

Need to add that to the McCainpedia  



McCain's Continuing Lies (agscribe - 9/16/2008 6:20:34 PM)
Just watch today's latest commercial by McCain claiming how he and Sarah would change Washington. In nearly 70 years, no one has come as close as McCain's ad makers to rivaling Josef Goebbels.


Corporations are legal persons (Teddy - 9/16/2008 6:25:56 PM)
I believe. Since McCain's ideology is totally incorporated, it's no wonder he left off "corporations" in his statement. He thinks they are completely equivalent to a breathing human being. Why, corporations are some of his best friends!


McCain top advisor Carly Fiorina called "offshoring" "right-shoring" (Lowell - 9/16/2008 8:59:26 PM)
See here for more:

Fiorina Called the Outsourcing of American Jobs 'Right Shoring.' As HP CEO, Fiorina made comments in Washington alongside Intel's CEO that "drew an unusually strong reaction from workers, who suggested the pair forfeit their own highly paid jobs to Chinese or Russian executives working for a quarter of their pay." Fiorina said that "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore" and had also said called what is generally referred to as "offshoring," the outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor centers overseas, as "right-shoring." [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/9/04; Investors Business Daily, 1/8/04]


If he was talking about Income Tax (tx2vadem - 9/16/2008 11:00:04 PM)
that is a true statement.  According to the IRS estimates of the tax gap ($345 billion as of 2001 estimate), they attribute $27 billion of the gap to people failing to file returns and pay tax all together.  So, it comes down to how you define many.  

And legally you can avoid all US taxation as an expatriate (depends on your total income though for the income tax piece of that equation).

But I don't know if McCain was referring to the tax gap.  And if he was, it is doubtful he wants to do anything but make it worse.  According to Palin and he, we can find efficiencies in the agencies (meaning budget cuts for the agencies).  In the IRS's case, that would mean less money for enforcement and more tax evasion.  So more people not paying any income tax at all.

Or maybe he is talking about all of the poor filers, who actually pay no income tax and receive money in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit.  Maybe he wants to end that and ensure even folks with tiny incomes have to pay income tax and eliminate the EITC.



My paycheck (Dan - 9/17/2008 10:11:57 PM)
Well, in my paycheck, there is a lot of money I don't get to keep.  A lot of that money goes to the government.  Whether you call that a tax or not, it doesn't matter.  The simple fact is that the government gets a cut of my hard work everyday.  That's not such a bad thing, except when Republicans are in office and spend those hard earned dollars unwisely.  I would be happier if my tax dollars were going to the Obama Administration.