Newsalert has posted a chart from a Wall Street Journal blog titled “Recession and the Rich.” The chart, based on 2009 IRS figures, shows that the number of taxpayers reporting annual income over $1 million fell 39 percent between 2007 and 2009; the number of super-wealthy individuals making over $10 million annually plunged 55 percent.
The carnage wasn’t confined to millionaires. The number of taxpayers earning over $200,000 per year also decreased by 612,000 – or 13 percent.
If you are tempted to join Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., in a bit of schadenfreude over the fact that nearly four in ten millionaires disappeared in two years, don’t be. The chart also shows how the loss of these top income earners adversely affected the federal government’s bottom line.
In 2007, those making above $200,000 (but less than $1 million) paid $610 billion in federal income taxes. In 2009, it was only $434 billion – leading to a 29 percent decrease in government revenue.
Same for the 408,394 millionaires who paid $420 billion in taxes in 2007. Just two years later, their numbers had been dramatically reduced, and the revenue the U.S. government collected from them likewise decreased to $232 billion.
People adjust.
Just ask John Galt. (The original one.)
Just rein in your living expenses, don’t take the income (there are plenty of legitimate ways, such as not selling investments and incurring capital gains,) and wait it out.
Obama will soon be gone.
@Nan G:
I suspect this is more to do with their incomes tanking, including having endless losses as the stock market slumps. The major adverse effects of the 2-year experiment with one-party rule won’t kick in until 2013. So, if you had a choice, you might be tempted to accelerate income into 2012, especially if Obama is reelected. The time to go Galt is 2013 – that’s my plan, anyway.
I would like to know how many of the rich have left the USA because of Obama’s constant insistence that they pay more in taxes.
I retire from the army next summer. I just looked at my projected tax bill, based on what I will be making in my civilian job. At 40% tax rate, I am projected to be paying over $200K in taxes on a little over $500K in income. (I clearly need a better CPA to do my taxes.) I realize that taxes are a necessity for constitutionally mandated government functions…but the bureaucratic leviathan has been on a rampage overstepping constitutional boundaries for over 60 years now. Think of what better outcomes that amount of taxes could do in a truly free capitalist system!
I am waiting for Mr. Galt to come invite me to his country, along with all the other folks who understand an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. I am tired of being told I am not paying my fair share by lying politicians who are stealing from me to buy the votes of the lazy and uneducated. I am tired of being around people who don’t understand that it isn’t charity when the government points a gun at me and empties my wallet to give money to people too lazy to earn their own keep so they vote for lying bastards that promise them “free money” from the government. I am tired of being silent when loudmouthed cretins spew their covetous venom and class warfare rhetoric. I am sickened by union goons who have the upside down view of employment being a ‘right’ rather than something earned. I am tired of the need to vomit when the president himself utters marxist dogma regarding government needing to spread the wealth around. There is no such provision in the Constitution, just as there is no “separation of church and state” in the Constitution.
I am disgusted that I have given over 27 years of my life in service to an ideal that is being destroyed by the very people charged by the voting public to serve and protect our precious Constitution. But whither shall I go? What nation exists that enshrines constitutional liberty as forged by our Founding Fathers, once the US crumbles into the socialist morass/anarchy to which we are headed?
I wish all the selfish, intellectually lazy, entitled brats in the US who blather on about the ‘rich’ needing to pay their ‘fair share’ had to live for a year in the stone age poverty that is the norm here in Afghanistan. Perhaps then they would appreciate the magnificence of the governmental framework that the Founding Fathers designed for the once greatest nation on earth. Alas, de Tocqueville’s prophesy has almost come true – that once the masses learn they can vote themselves largess from the public trough, the republic is doomed.
I am kept grimly amused by the fervent hope that there is a special place in hell for the class warfare pseudo-intellectuals responsible for denigrating the most productive, free and Judeo-Christian nation to have ever existed. I am ashamed to the core that I cannot find within me the inner strength that propelled Washington to eventual victory over the (then) world’s strongest military despite his first demoralizing losses on the battlefield. We are in a battle for the very life of our nation against the forces of amorality, confusion and tyranny. The selfish, power-mad left and the islamic supremacists are united in their goal of dismantling what power the US has remaining – there is precious little time left for real Americans to rise up to stand against the utter failure of Keynesianism, socialism and moral relativism. How shameful for our generation to be the one that buries the grand edifice of liberty given to us by our Founding Fathers. There are no chains of slavery so agonizing as the soul-rending knowledge that our generation was too self-absorbed, too preoccupied with self-gratification to stand up to the leftist hordes and say, “You will not take my liberty from me!”
I remember reading just 2 or 3 years ago some russian economist predicting that the US would soon dissolve, and he made predictions about what other countries would do to try to get their money back from what they loaned us by buying our debt. I scoffed at such nonsense…but that was before Obama was elected and began enacting every destructive policy he has put into place. That was before the credit downgrade, the almost doubling of the unemployment rate, and the pending double dip recession and slide into another world-wide depression. I am no longer scoffing at those dire predictions.
A vote for any democrat is a vote to end the constitutional republic of the United States. A vote for a RINO/’compassionate conservative’ is the same, only slightly lengthening the period before the fall of the US. It is time to retake our government by voting for people who support the following:
1. Secure the border and deport all illegal aliens. No more ‘anchor babies’. Then we can work on fixing the path to legal immigration for those wanting to become US citizens.
2. End the income tax. Switch to a national sales tax, with only staple foods items exempted. (Bread, milk, cheese, meat, vegetables and fruit and such….but twinkies, booze, caviar and such will be taxed.)
3. Devise a plan to end the giant ponzi scheme of social security now for everyone under 50. Those over 50 would get the promised benefits, but everyone else would have to be responsible for their own retirement planning. (I am under 50 – but not by much, so I am willing to make my sacrifice on this.)
4. Repeal Obamacare. Now. Get the government out of the medical price-fixing scam.
5. End Medicare and Medicaid. Health care is not a right. If you believe it is, then you believe that doctors, nurses and pharmacists are nothing but slaves to the collective. Good luck with that.
6. Term limits for all federal offices. Absolutely NO pension for senators and house members, no matter how long they serve. These clowns need to live under the laws they pass for the rest of us, without an insulating golden parachute.
7. Place all members of Congress under the UCMJ, just like the military. No more self-investigation by other congress critters for crimes committed by congressmen and women.
8. End the EPA, Dept of Ed, and all other failing federal bureaucracies. Return to the individual states the responsibilities for these governmental functions. Allow states to be the laboratories to find the most efficient means of government and economic effort, without political interference from leftist/collectivist ideologues in D.C.
9. Become energy independent through drilling in ANWR, offshore, and through use of other known resources under US control. Build nuclear power plants, and new oil refineries. Stop burning corn in our gas tanks – it is less efficient than regular gas, and does not reduce pollution.
10. Hold the liars pushing the junk science of anthropogenic global warming/climate change culpable for their lies, deliberate falsification of data, and put them in jail where they belong. (It’s the sun, stupid.)
11. Require a semester long course in high school on American government that focuses solely on “The Federalist Papers.” Require a minimum grade of ‘C’ to graduate from high school. Require a minimum grade of ‘B’ to be allowed to vote.
12. Hold union leaders legally and financially responsible for any crimes committed by their members during strike activity. Make every state a right-to-work state.
13. Overturn all laws banning guns, except for convicted felons and the mentally ill/disabled. In the same legislation, pass law that mandates the death penalty for anyone using a gun to commit a violent crime, sentence to be carried out within 7 days of conviction.
14. End contingency fee law, and enact “loser pays” for all civil law. If the loser cannot pay the legal expenses of the winning party, then the loser’s lawyer is required to pay. (This will greatly reduce frivolous lawsuits.)
15. Resign from the UN. It is nothing but a leftist cabal providing false legitimacy to tyrants and dictators around the world. Kick the organization out of NY, and use the property as something useful. Use the money we waste on the leftist UN claptrap to pay down our national debt.
16. Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment that requires Congress to pass a balanced budget every year by 15 July. Failure to pass a balanced budget on that date results in every member of congress forfeiting their congressional salary for an entire year. For each day that Congress does not pass a balanced budget after the 15th of July, each Congressional member will be fined $10,000, and be sentenced to one month in prison after completion of their current term in Congress. Their screwing around with budget politics screws around with the lives and livelihoods of all 400 million US citizens….I don’t think I’m being too harsh in setting up these penalties.
OK…venting completed. For those of you who put up with my rant, congratulations. I encourage you to read “The Federalist Papers”. I encourage you to also read Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” to compare and contrast the philosophical systems of our Founding Fathers versus the disgusting, lazy reprobate who foisted collectivist ideology in its modern form upon us all. Then, if you have time, I encourage you to read the koran, so you can see for yourself what we are up against in the continuing war with islam.
God bless, good luck, and have a nice day.
In case you hadn’t heard, we’ve been in a recession.
Babydoc, the country I want to live in is as you described – the one our founders originally set up. If I wanted socialized medicine, or government control of speech, or mindless government regulations, or any other number of government intrusions on my freedom and liberty, there are many countries I can move to.
On the other hand, what other country is there to move to that has a foundation of low government burden, freedom, liberty, and free markets?
We need to keep our country unique in the world, true to its founding because its success was due to the fact that its system of government was better than the others. Our current batch of politicians are turning us into just another government heavy country with no real differences and that is shameful.
@Babydoc: Hopefully you’ll get your military pension. They seem to want to take that away too.
@ Babydoc
Oh Hell Yeah!!
Wait, you’re retiring from the Army? You sound smart enough to have been Air Force! 😉
Aqua…LOL…the USAF always forgets that they started as the Army Air Corps…:)