Archive for September 21st, 2012

Breaking news: Romney’s tax rate only 14.1% … but his all important GBSR is 43%

September 21, 2012

OK, Romney released his 2011 tax return.

  • In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income.
  • The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%.
  • The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.

Holy Buffett, Mitt only paid 14.1% in Federal income taxes … a lower rate than Warren’s secretary.

Scoundrel.

Let’s re-write the tax code.

Not so fast.

Last fall, the Homa Files coined a new metric: the GBSR™ – “Give Back to Society Rate”

We defined the GBSR™ as the sum of taxes paid plus charitable contributions – since those are all money that’s supposed to be going to the common good, albeit administered by different organizations – divided by AGI.

In Romney’s case, his release says that he made $13.7 million … paid $1.9 million in taxes … and donated a whopping $4.02 million to charities.

So, his tax rate may sound meager @ 14.1%, but his GBSR™ is about 43% – and that’s not counting state & local income taxes.

My bet: add S&L taxes in and Mitt‘s GBSR™ is way over 45%.

So, it just may be that the tax code is leading fat cats to do the right thing – it’s just that they’re giving much of their dough to private charities instead of the Feds.

Do you blame them?

* * * * *
Romney’s 20 year tax history

According to the Standard ,,,

  • In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.
  • Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.
  • Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%.
  • Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.
  • Over the entire 20-year period, Romney’s GBSR™ the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total AGI.

* * * * *
For comparison …

Filers in Obama’s millionaire range ($200,000 to $250,000) donate about 2.5% of their income to charities.

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Picture of the week: Remember the Somalian pirates?

September 21, 2012

Well, apparently they’ve taken their game up a notch.

But, we can all relax … the President is dishing his charm to get the pirates under control.

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Photo courtesy of Obama-Biden 2012

You just can’t make this stuff up.

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Unemployment claims drop by 3,000 … well, not really.

September 21, 2012

Yesterday’s headline’s trumpeted a 3,000  drop in initial unemployment claims.

Hooray. Right?

Of course not, the BLS revised last week’s number up by 3.000 so that it could report this week as being down by 3,000.

Huh?

Now we’re up to 79 out of 80 weeks — and, at least 20 election season weeks in a row — that the BLS’s “headline number” has under-reported the number of initial unemployment claims … and cast the jobs situation as brighter than it really is.

Based on Thursday’s BLS report, the number for the week ending Sept. 8 was revised upward from 382,000 to 385,000.

In itself, the 3,000 isn’t a big deal.

But, in context it is

Again, I ask: statistical bias or political bias?

If the former: fix it already, BLS.

Hint to BLS: just add 2k or 3k … or .8% to your prelim forecast !

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I promise that I’ll stop writing about BLS reporting bias when the streak ends.

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Factoids: The state of the economy …

September 21, 2012

The economic analyses done by Mort Zuckerman at US News are always laden with cold facts.

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Read the article for the prose. Here are the factoids:

  • Annual wage increases have dropped to an average of 1.6 percent, the lowest in the past 30 years.
  • A Census Bureau analysis  indicates that median income in 2011 had fallen to $50,054, the fourth straight year of decline.
  • Layoff announcements have risen from a year ago and hiring plans have dropped dramatically.
  • 5 million people have now been out of work for 27 weeks or more. That’s roughly 40 percent of the unemployed.
  • The average period of unemployment is close to 40 weeks.
  • Fewer Americans are at work today than in April 2000, even though the population has grown by 30 million people since then.
  • Older people are not leaving the workforce at the same rate as in the past … employment in the age group of 55 and older is up 3.9 million, even as total employment is down by five million.
  • The so-called quit rate has sagged to the lowest rate in years.
  • Young workers now face double-digit unemployment and job prospects for young workers aren’t very good.
  • As a result, the birth rate has just hit a 25-year low of 1.87 births per woman. And
  • Of jobs that have been added, more than 40 percent of new private sector jobs are in low-paying categories such as leisure and hospitality, bars, and restaurants
  • Millions of people who had good private sector jobs are now dependent on the government for life support.
  • Roughly 15 percent of the population, a record, representing over 46 million Americans, are in the food stamp program, compared to the 7.9 percent participation from 1970 to 2000.
  • A record 11 million-plus Americans are now collecting federal disability checks. Half of them have come on board since President Barack Obama took office.

Sure doesn’t look like we’ve turned the corner yet.

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