The Poor DO Pay Taxes - Charity? g

This new lie that the poor pay no taxes is just another Republican stunt.  Our country has a high regressive tax system.... to show you what I mean, in the 1990's report on regressive taxes Utah had a sales tax of 8.25%.  Both the poor and the wealthy have to pay that, and other regressive taxes such as school, housing, and such.

  Let us just focus on the sales tax.  A poor family, with both parents working, that we complain are not raising their children to our standards (true but is most often because both are working and the cannot afford a nanny), earning $30,000.00 (or less) cannot put anything away for savings as they must survive, will pay $2475.00 on sales tax alone.  A wealthy family-such as Mitt Romney- spends 5 times as much (that he pays sales tax on than the poorer family), in order to live his luxury lifestyle.  Still he is not by far in the ultra-wealthy 68 million dollars a year/bonus people.  Mr. Romeny, although very, very rich and out of touch with 99% of America, is still at the "bottom" of the wealthy. The amount on Romney's money, even cut in half, is  roughly 2/10ths of a percent of their income if you round it up from the .00183, while the poor family with both working, end up paying roughly 1% rounded up from .0825. (Remember when President Bush was bragging that "only in America can a person work 3 jobs" in response to the poor saying many held 2-3 jobs just to survive)

Yes, the poor end up paying 5x more of their income on sales tax than the wealthy.  The same applies for all regressive taxes... even though everyone is taxed at the same rate, the impact on their income is significantly different.  The poor do indeed pay taxes!

On another note- in Romney gives 13-14% of his income to charity.  President Obama gives 14% of his income to charity  (Obama has far less money than Romney).  Then Rick Santorum, who states the poor and needy should be taken care of through individual charity and church charity, only pays 1-2% to charity citing he cannot afford to pay more due to family circumstances.  I know of many, many wonderful people who make far, far less than Santorum, with as much or more personal circumstances to bear financially, that year after year after year pay 10% in tithing and more in other donations.