Since the Bush tax cuts of 2003 reduced both the capital gains and dividend rates to 15%, the top 400 have been paying an effective income tax rate of only around 18% of AGI.
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When the Romneys' self-employment payroll tax is excluded, their effective income-tax rate is 13.9%.
As I pointed out here, because of the historically low 15% rate on long term capital gains (compared to a top tax rate of 35% for ordinary income, like salary) the 400 highest income Americans now pay a lower effective federal income tax rate than the merely well paid.
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Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, noted in a statement that Obama's 2011 effective federal income tax rate is 20.5% and that the president's own policies would result in higher taxes for the Obama family.
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Chidambaram, while announcing the federal budget for the financial year starting April 1, proposed a so-called surcharge that would push the effective income-tax rate for a select group of taxpayers to about 34% from the current 30.9%, according to tax experts.
Raising your personal income tax rate on dividend and capital gain income to 30 percent increases your effective tax rate to 45.3 percent.
And if you tack on their shares of the corporate income tax and the estate tax, their effective tax rate hit 24.5 percent.
The new report also shows the impact of the Bush-era tax cuts on the effective tax rate higher-income folks pay.
In addition, the effective marginal tax rate on labor income would rise from about 28 percent now to about 36 percent in 2037.
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And he went on to talk about a concrete vote the Senate will take in the next few weeks on the so-called Buffett Rule, his principle, named after Warren Buffett, built around the idea that a billionaire should not pay a lower effective tax rate on his income than his secretary.
For example, China provides tax holidays or rulings reducing the effective tax rate on certain corporate income to 15% or 20%.
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Foreigners are attracted chiefly by Malta's tax system, which allows income tax on dividends to be offset against corporate tax, reducing the effective tax rate on dividends from 35% to 5%.
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Over the two years, Romney's effective tax rate -- the percentage of his income that he owed in federal income taxes -- was 14.5%.
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Those returns between the bottom 50 percent and the top 25 percent pay an average effective tax rate of only 5.6 percent, accounting for only 11.8 percent of all federal income tax revenue.
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The result: the more of your income from gains and dividends, the lower your effective tax rate (ETR).
Your income from quarterly dividends would be taxed according to your effective tax rate, maxing out at 39.6%.
The only exception is the lowest-earners, whose effective tax rate is nearly zero, thanks to the earned income credit.
And that would apply to somebody paying 15 percent -- an effective tax rate of 15 percent on millions of dollars of income.
But with the corporate income tax rate being what it is, the second highest effective tax rate in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, then companies are doing what is logically sane for them to do.
Lisbon plans to lift income tax revenue by more than 30 per cent, raising the effective average rate by more than a third from 9.8 to 13.2 per cent.
This is similar to one of the scenarios predicted earlier, but the question up until the last minute has been at what income level would the older, higher top marginal tax rate be effective.
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But there are many others who are paying an effective tax rate that is much lower, because of the nature of their income.
So with income tax at 45% and surtax at 52.5%, the effective rate was 147.5%.
France has long seen income tax as a mechanism for soaking the rich, who currently pay an effective marginal rate of around 60%.
And the effective tax rate on this group is much higher, not lower, than any other income category.
Effective January 2013, Slovakia, with a 19% flat income tax system, raised its corporate tax rate to 23%, and introduced a second 25% tax bracket for higher personal incomes.
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The top effective tax rate is under 30%, and of course, this ignores the fact that investment income is treated in an entirely different (read: more lax) way.
If no further action is taken by Congress, the maximum individual income tax bracket would increase to a stated rate of 39.6%, but an effective marginal rate of 40.8% for most high-bracket taxpayers due to a limitation on itemized deductions that would also come back in 2013.
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