Wealthy benefit most from tax subsidies: study

[Better Today]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68L3WP20100922

Billions of dollars in U.S. tax breaks to encourage home ownership, retirement savings, business start-ups and education mostly benefit top income earners and do little to help low- and middle-income people build wealth, a report released on Wednesday said.

The U.S. government spent nearly $400 billion, mostly through tax breaks, in 2009 to promote home ownership and other wealth-building strategies, and more than half of that benefited the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers, said the study sponsored by the nonprofit Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).

The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the CFED advocate for greater economic opportunities for the poor.(snip)

This is completely in line with what I've seen. Seems only the wealthy have the time and resources to benefit from many of the programs especially the tax breaks. The rest of us are just screwed, lacking the breathing room to hire lawyers, to fight with bankers for business loans when we've been stagnant for a couple of years, to deal with the months and months it takes to get a favorable review in many of the other programs like home mortgage assistance.

[elleng]

1. No surprise here;

'the wealthy have the time and resources to benefit.' That's the way of the world.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction

It would be nice if the mortgage interest deduction would be eliminated as it distorts the housing market but that seems
politically unlikely to happen.

[Taitertots]

3. Lets stop calling them "subsidies" and start calling it welfare

While at the same time ceasing to call personal social safety nets welfare and start calling them subsidies.

[fasttense]

4. We should call them entitlements. The uber rich think they are entitled

to welfare.

There is a farming subsidy program here that we applied for. It was a cost share program to build a barn. But, get this, you had to have 600 head of cattle and/or 800 head of sheep to qualify. A ewe is going for about $300, young lambs and rams are about $250 to $200 here. So if you had 800 head of sheep, you have at a minimum $160,000 investment. You could sell about 50 sheep and build your barn with 750 sheep still in your flock.

We who have only 30 head of sheep did not qualify. Entitlements for the rich even in farm subsidies.