Pastor Rick Warren, who has made a nice living running a mega-church and writing inspirational books like The Purpose-Driven Life, tweeted this last night (now deleted):
Render unto Caesar and all! I certainly remember all of Jesus’s sermons about the unfairness of high taxes on the wealthy job creators, and about how welfare makes poor people lazy. I’ll let Karoli explain about taxes:
Let’s get this out of the way first: What you said is untrue. Had you said 50% don’t pay income tax, you’d have at least been partly right, because tax preferences currently benefit lower and middle class taxpayers to some extent via the EIC, the child care credit, and other tax subsidies.
But to say they don’t pay taxes? That’s flatly untrue. Everyone who drives a car pays taxes when they fill up their tank. Everyone who buys toilet paper pays sales taxes here in California. Everyone who works has FICA/FUTA taxes withheld and paid. Everyone. Rich, poor, or middle. And as a percentage of income, those taxes are a whole lot more than the ones you defend as “already paying taxes”, especially when the taxes they do pay means they have to ration meals, or medications, or go without in order to feed their children.
Here’s a partial list of entities who paid no taxes. This is who you defend: General Electric, Bank of America, Boeing, Wells Fargo Bank, Goldman Sachs, Exxon-Mobil, Koch Industries, BP, and more. And for that privilege, some outsourced jobs to other countries, others just downsized, and still others decided they’d overwork their younger employees and let the older ones go while they still could.
All working people pay Social Security tax (so it’s an entitlement that they’ve paid into all their life) and Medicare tax. They also pay property tax, sales tax, local tax, state tax, gas tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax. Not to mention the various fees that poor pay that others don’t, like payroll advance (many can’t afford bank accounts for the fees) and rent-to-own.