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Guest
Mitt Romney asserted that the 47 percent of Americans who had no federal income tax liability would “vote for the president no matter what.”
Actually, a lot them don’t vote, and of those who do, many vote Republican.
We do have some demographic information about those 47 percent (technically, 46 percent, if you’re looking at the most recent year of data) of American households that don’t pay federal income taxes, and we can use those demographics to make some educated guesses about how those people might vote.
About half of people who don’t owe federal income tax owe nothing because their incomes are too low; that is, all of their income is exempted after they take the standard deduction and personal exemptions for taxpayers and their dependents.
For the most part, these households make less than $30,000 a year.
What about the rest of households who don’t pay federal income taxes?
This group generally doesn’t pay federal income taxes because of various deductions and credits in the tax code, known as “tax expenditures.”
According to the Tax Policy Center, about three-quarters of these remaining households pay no income tax because of tax expenditures that benefit older people and low-income working families with children.
Those benefiting from tax provisions for low-income working families with children are, by definition, poor, and as we’ve established, poor people lean strongly Democratic but they don’t vote in very high numbers.
The remainder of the households that don’t pay federal income taxes because of other miscellaneous tax expenditures (tax-exempt interest, itemized deductions, capital gains rates and so forth) are harder to pin down demographically, so it’s challenging to make educated guesses about their likely voting behavior.
Romney also said that this “47 percent” of people who don’t pay federal income taxes are the same people who are “dependent” on government services.
But as a portrait of the social safety net in The New York Times found: Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/how-do-the-47-vote/?src=recg
Actually, a lot them don’t vote, and of those who do, many vote Republican.
We do have some demographic information about those 47 percent (technically, 46 percent, if you’re looking at the most recent year of data) of American households that don’t pay federal income taxes, and we can use those demographics to make some educated guesses about how those people might vote.
About half of people who don’t owe federal income tax owe nothing because their incomes are too low; that is, all of their income is exempted after they take the standard deduction and personal exemptions for taxpayers and their dependents.
For the most part, these households make less than $30,000 a year.
What about the rest of households who don’t pay federal income taxes?
This group generally doesn’t pay federal income taxes because of various deductions and credits in the tax code, known as “tax expenditures.”
According to the Tax Policy Center, about three-quarters of these remaining households pay no income tax because of tax expenditures that benefit older people and low-income working families with children.
Those benefiting from tax provisions for low-income working families with children are, by definition, poor, and as we’ve established, poor people lean strongly Democratic but they don’t vote in very high numbers.
The remainder of the households that don’t pay federal income taxes because of other miscellaneous tax expenditures (tax-exempt interest, itemized deductions, capital gains rates and so forth) are harder to pin down demographically, so it’s challenging to make educated guesses about their likely voting behavior.
Romney also said that this “47 percent” of people who don’t pay federal income taxes are the same people who are “dependent” on government services.
But as a portrait of the social safety net in The New York Times found: Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/how-do-the-47-vote/?src=recg