Note: This is a repost of a Daily Kos diary I published about a year and a half ago. I was inspired to repost it by the current story about a business owner who’s afraid to earn more than $250,000 because she thinks she’ll lose money by doing so.

When I reposted it last night over at Daily Kos, it hit the Rec list and the poll received over 500 responses. According to those results, 23% of Daily Kos readers didn’t understand how tax brackets worked before reading the diary.

Think about that — this is a pretty highly-educated, policy-savvy, math-and-science-aware, reality-based community overall, and almost a quarter of them weren’t/aren’t aware of one of the most basic tenets of the tax code.

The Full Monty after the jump.

Do NOT let the tea party and Mackinac Center assume control

Fourth in a series on the ballot proposals on Michigan’s November 6, 2012 ballot. Read them all HERE.

Of all of the proposals on Michigan’s 2012 ballot, Prop 5 is probably the most insidious. Carefully cloaked in simple language, it appears benign. All they are asking for, say proponents, is a simple two-thirds majority vote in both the State House AND the State Senate on any tax increases. Seems pretty straightforward.

It’s not. If Prop 5 passes, it will ensure that Michigan never sees a revenue increase again. Period. No arguing here. Because, seriously, people, when did 2/3 of both chambers of the State Legislature EVER agree on anything? It means that this state will be stuck at the level of revenue it has now. And it’s worth reminding you that the Michigan Republicans just enacted a massive $2 billion a year tax break.

More after the jump.

Dude, don’t you get dizzy?

Mitt Romney is out in the open telling two completely different stories about how he both WILL and WON’T lower taxes on America’s wealthiest citizens. He WILL, he says, because it will spur the economy. He WON’T, he says, because he’ll be closing some as-yet undisclosed loopholes.

Both sides of his face revealed after the jump.

Say, Mitt, when will these guys take personal responsibility & care about THEIR lives?

With Mitt Romney bloviating about how half the country are tax cheats that feel “entitled” to things like food and healthcare and housing, I got to thinking about who else in the USA doesn’t pay taxes. Then I remembered a report by the Citizens for Tax Justice (pdf) that came out earlier this year. It was a report that showed 26 Fortune 500 companies — PROFITABLE Fortune 500 companies, I should add — that paid no taxes or actually got a rebate every year since 2008.

Major rant after the jump.

Pay no attention to the traitor behind the curtain

By now you know how bad a day Mitt Romney had yesterday. Nearly every headline coming out of his trip to Michigan included the word “birther” in it. It was so bad, in fact, that he quickly sent out a “Look over there! Something shiny!” email to his mailing list, trotting out a thoroughly debunked lie about President Obama removing the work requirement from welfare.

But I would be willing to bet that the Romney campaign is actually relieved that this tempest in a teapot discussion about his slinging red meat to the birthers is dominating the headlines. Why? Because otherwise people would be talking about the massive release of nearly 1,000 pages of internal documents by Gawker from Romney’s days at Bain Capital that show conclusively that he went to dramatic and possibly illegal lengths to avoid paying taxes.

What Mitt Romney is counting on is that Americans are more excited about talking about inflammatory remarks about President Obama’s birth certificate than they are about discussions about high finance, a world most of us will never know, much less understand.

More after the jump.

How can you forget millions in income???

Mitt Romney’s pick for Vice President, Paul Ryan, appears to have himself quite a memory problem. First, he had to amend two years of tax returns before he was confirmed as the VP pick. Why?

Because he neglected to report income of between $1 million and $5 million.

As Texas governor Rick Perry would say: Oops.

Much, much more after the jump.

Romney Hood: stealing from the Middle Class to give to the rich

At a campaign stop in Stamford, Connecticut yesterday, President Obama referring to Mitt Romney’s economic plan, the one that pays for historic tax cuts for the super wealthy by increasing taxes on average Americans, renamed Mitt Romney “Romney Hood”. He’s a reverse Robin Hood, said the president, stealing from Middle Class Americans to give to the very rich in our country.

It was brilliant.

Transcript and more after the jump.

A successful myth, of course, but a myth nonetheless

A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released last week shows that the claim by Republicans that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest among would harm small businesses is a myth. In fact, only 2.5% of small business owners are in the top two tax rates and only 0.5% of them are millionaires.

Ammunition to fight back against these lies after the jump.

Freedom isn’t free, Mitt. So, pay your damned taxes!

Two explosive acts of real journalism this week have the Romney campaign rocked back on their heels. The wealthy Romneys, already struggling to connect with average Americans, are now revealed to have offshore bank accounts and investments that allow them to avoid paying substantial taxes to the U.S. government.

All the gory details after the jump.

Ahhh…so THAT’S why he wants to be the president…

It’s no secret that Mitt Romney’s run for the presidency is heavily financed and supported by the 0.1%. They stand to gain a great deal if he is elected. But a recent analysis by two groups, Citizens for Tax Justice (a liberalish group) and Tax Foundation (a conservatish group) suggest that maybe there’s as much in it for Mitt Romney as there is for his wealthy pals.

If Barack Obama is elected, his tax plan will cost Mitt Romney $5 million per year.

Michigan Republicans: Making an art form out of pandering to the stupid.

Last year, the Michigan Republicans raised taxes on over half of the residents of Michigan. In fact, the tax increase was an average 23% according to a report by the Michigan League for Human Services (pdf).

Yesterday, they reached an agreement to lower personal income taxes. By how much?

0.1%

They raised taxes by 23% now they are cutting them by one-tenth of a percent. Just another example among many of Republican FAKE CONCESSIONS.

[More after the jump]