In his State of the Union address, President Obama recycled much of the same rhetoric he has repeated for over three years. He also introduced America to Debra Bosanek, the 55 year old secretary to Warren Buffet, claiming that she paid more in taxes than the billionaire.
First, the President was being misleading. In fact, in real dollars Warren Buffet paid much more in taxed than his secretary. Most of Buffet’s earnings come in the form of investments and not ordinary income, which is taxed differently. Bosanek salary is taxed as ordinary income and any investments she might have would be taxed as investment income which, when held more than 12 months, is taxed at a lower rate.
The president’s set up is this- Debra Bosanek is one of millions of middle income workers who pays more in taxes than the greedy rich and that the system must be repaired out of fairness and require those in the top 1% to pay more. The top 1% is defined as anyone making more than $385,000 a year. Data provided by the Obama IRS shows that those individual paid, on average, an net effective tax rate of 23.27%. By the way, the bottom 50% paid a net effective tax rate of just 2.59%.
Based on the tax rate percentage Bosanek alleges she pays, Forbes has determined that she and her husband earn between $200,000 and $500,000 a year. If this is the case, this would place her in the top 1%-5% of income earners in the United States. The President should be celebrating that she’s paying her fair share and not using her as an example of inequality.
Since the President used her as an example, Bosanek should release her tax records so the American public can judge for themselves whether Bosanek is being unfairly tax- if there is truly inequality… or was this simple any gimmick by the President and a select group of his liberal elitist.
Bosanek, the new face of the middle class recently purchased a vacation home complete with built-in pool and putting green. Life as a secretary must really be rough.
If the President and liberals want to be misleading about this, one has to question what else have they been lying about.
Courtesy: John Paulus
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