Barack Obama filed his tax return, showing he made about $1.7 million last year.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is making less money than he used to, though it’s still a lot: He and wife Michelle reported income of $1.73 million last year, mostly from the books he’s written, according to his just-filed tax return. That was down from the $5.5 million of a year earlier.
The president, who has been campaigning to raise taxes on the wealthy, paid the government $453,770 in federal taxes, about a quarter of the income. Just last week, he renewed his push to end Bush-era tax cuts for households with annual incomes above $250,000 — noting that that would include him.
The Obama’s donated about $250,000 to charities, but one wonders- why not more? For what does Obama need money?
Thanks to the Bush tax cuts Obama saved an additional $100,000 in taxes.
WASHINGTON — President Obama banked a six-figure savings when he agreed to extend the Bush-era tax cuts last year, as he hauled in $1.73 million, the first family’s tax returns show.
Obama continued to earn big bucks last year, mainly through book royalties, according to tax returns released by the White House yesterday.
“I don’t need another tax cut,” Obama said last week.
But he sure got one. According to a tax calculator provided by the Tax Foundation, the Obama family saved about $100,000 compared to what they would have paid if the president and Congress had let the Bush tax cuts expire.
The question is, why?
Why doesn’t the guy who wants it your wealth “spread around” spread his around even more. Moreover, why does the guy who doesn’t need the tax cut take the tax cut? Why doesn’t he willingly pay taxes at the rates he wants to impose on his fellow super-rich?
Could it be because he’s a stinking hypocrite?
Nah.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Anyone who wants to can donate money toward the deficit/national debt.
Here’s how:
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 622D
Hyattsville, MD 20782
(No, that’s NOT my address! LOL!)
Obama might want to emphasize this fact.
A lot of folks who voted for him had guilt issues.
They might go for it.
I love the site here, very informative. I am also a conservative, so I am not sticking up for the TOTUS/Reader in Chief. In fairness though, but probably just to cover his ass, he did donate the $100,000 to O’Reily’s Fisher House Fund.
@Seneca_1001: OK, that’s nice, but why not spread it all around? I mean, at some point you’ve made enough money, right?
Obama:If he weren’t clueless:
Could it be because he’s a stinking hypocrite?
The only thing worse than a hypocrite, is a hypocrite who stinks!
Its kind of like intellectual property rights, as in:
“I thought of the idea, therefore I deserve to have tax benefits and or payment because of my innate intellectual brilliance and my saving the world one tax dollar at a time. Let’s not forget all that. By the way I received a peace award, I started a war but I still deserve an award for peace because I am so freakin awesome!”
Interesting article linked up above, concerning the Obamas’ 2010 taxes. $245,075 in charitable donations for the year isn’t exactly stingy, nor do I see how anyone could find fault with where the bulk of those donations went.
The Obamas paid a hefty total in state and federal taxes for 2010. To my mind, the fact that he advocates discontinuing high-end tax cuts that would raise his own family’s tax bill is valid subject for him to have commented on. Can those in Congress who advocate lowering the top tax rate down to 25% honestly tell you that doing so wouldn’t be to their own personal financial benefit?
And I expected Greggie to say that those who control too much of the wealth in this country should pay more. I further expected him to say that Obama has made enough money and should have filed his taxes at the tax rates he prefers everyone else pay, the pre-Bush era tax rates.
But what does Greggie do? He defends Obie, most likely after he lit another candle to the alter of Obama he has in his living room…
Nobody was talking about his charitable donations, Greggie. We are talking about his hypocrisy. Surely you can see that he ought to have paid his taxes at the higher rate, right?
@anticsrocks, #7:
Actually, no, I don’t see the hypocrisy. The Obamas should pay what the law requires them to pay. If the rates change, the new amount that the law requires is what they should pay.
That he advocates out of principle a discontinuation of high-end tax cuts that would have the effect of raising his own family’s taxes is a small but noteworthy point in his favor, to my way of thinking. It takes a bit of convoluted thinking to somehow view it as a point against him.
A true Obama Useful Idiot, would write the Obamas pay the taxes that the government “Allows” them to pay; after all, it is patriotic to pay taxes and the more you pay the more patriotic you become. Unfortunately, there is a tipping point. When, because of taxation, it is no longer worth exerting the extra effort to put forth a good product, for example Bill Ayers writing Dreams Of My Father for Obama, the spirit of business and risk taking will die and America will die. Americans with capital will leave the failed experiment of American Socialism to suffocate in its own Marxist excrement. Those who must stay will have their money offshore to avoid the predatory taxation of Obama, like Soros does. The money will disappear and there will be almost no one to support the profligate spending required to elect the Socialists of the future.
Cuba is going to survive by drilling in the gulf, but in the wisdom of Obama, we have decided to preclude ourselves from any of this dirty money. The new United Socialist States will be an environmental utopia; we will have the most healthy homeless people in the world. They can sleep in the roads without fear, for there will be no vehicles or noxious exhaust fumes to poison them while they beg for government handouts. Yes a vote for Obama is a vote for the future you are asking for and we are well on our way.
In the absense of any socialist component–Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc–what would our capitalist society do with the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the able-bodied for whom no jobs exist? The long-standing national trends in wealth and income distribution are clearly making it increasingly difficult even for average working Americans to prepare for their own non-working years. What’s the workable alternative to accepting the need pay for a social safety net that doesn’t require us to abandon our fundamental humanity?
If capitalist and socialist components can’t somehow be brought into a rational and sustainable economic balance, neither will fare well in the long term.
@Greg:
That statement is flawed. As has been shown by history, the two cannot coexist with one another in stasis. But all that is completely beside the point, Greg. Socialist programs run in opposition to our Constitution. Regardless of the fact that we have had such programs for decades, they are unconstitutional in theory, and in practice, and only the dilution of knowledge concerning our Constitution, and the limits it places upon our government, has allowed these programs to stand for as long as they have.
The writings of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, in the Federalist Papers, explain clearly the meanings of phrases and clauses contained within the Constitution. Our Constitution has a built in mechanism for allowing change to the government, yet it wasn’t used for the implementation of such socialistic programs like Social Security, Medicare, Welfare and others. Those, like the recent ‘Obamacare’, were bullied through with legislation, by people lecturing the populace on what was good for them. Now, after decades, with millions on the doles of those programs, they have become untouchable, as far as reforms are concerned, with pols, from both sides, leveling groundless attacks on those whose wish it is to change them.
How can we be a nation of laws, as wished by our founding fathers, when we allow such legislation to exist, contrary to our own Constitution, the supreme law of the land? How can the government hold a murderer guilty for his crimes, when the government itself has engaged in criminal action against it’s own charter?
Do I propose a sudden, and complete change to those programs, devoid of any thought of the repercussions in doing so? No, I do not. The government has turned men into dependents upon the graces of it’s own will, and a sudden stoppage of the flow of government dollars would leave many out in the cold, so to speak. No, we must, instead, gradually wean the country off of this dependency, and it can be done, despite what liberals would have us believe. Until we move in that direction, of Constitutionally limited government, with few dependent upon the government for their subsistence, the momentum will swing our country towards socialism, or statism, where all but a chosen few are in servitude to the masses. That you and your kind, even with good intentions, cannot see this, is just one of the obstacles we conservatives must overcome.
So that means that if one is opposed to Social Security and Medicare then one must, as a matter of principle, refuse to participate in those programs? If you are opposed to government funding of PBS, you must not watch NOVA or a Ken Burns documentary or let your kids watch Sesame Street? If you lose your job, you must not accept an unemployment check? If you get caught between jobs without health insurance, you should just go ahead and die? Insulate your attic and then don’t take the tax credit, because the law providing the tax credit was intended to reduce greenhouse gases?
It takes no political guts at all to cut taxes and oppose tax hikes — even when it’s clearly the right thing to do. No one ever lost a vote because he supported a tax cut or opposed a tax hike. Thousands of brave politicians have lost jobs and careers for supporting tax hikes and opposing tax cuts.
Bravest (and most foolish) line I ever heard in a Presidential debate was Mondale saying, in a 1984 debate with Reagan, “Both of us are going to increase your taxes; he won’t say it — I just did.” And Reagan beat him up on this issue and killed him in the election — and ended up raising taxes, just as Mondale said that he would.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry, I think there’s a fatal flaw in your point:
IF, and I mean a BIG “”IF,” you had the choice not to have to PAY into all of those programs, THEN your ”argument” might hold water.
But you know that people do not have the right to pick and chose where their taxes go, right?
In the 1960’s Joan Baez went all the way to the Supreme Court fighting for the right to pick and chose where her tax money went (not Viet Nam) and she lost…..spent time behind bars, too.
So today, you do not have the right to not pay for Medicare, Social Security, PBS, NPR, Unemployment, or any of Obama’s Stimulus to supposedly cover insulation, et al.
So, when you qualify for such things, you have a perfect right to avail yourself of them.
We plan to supplement our retirements with both SS and Medicare when we qualify for them.
Personally, we insulated during Obama’s rebate window.
But, because we refused to hire union level wage-earners to do the work, we did not qualify for any rebate.
That’s fine.
I’ll watch PBS whenever I feel like it and STILL politik to de-fund NPR.
Most of my favs are imports from the UK anyway.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
It takes no courage to continue with the status quo, concerning spending, and then take other people’s money to pay for it. It takes more courage to stand up and say that government doesn’t have the right, by the Constitution, to spend money on programs they are spending it on, and I would include those who say we spend too much on defense.
It is not brave to recommend taking more from a neighbor. It IS brave to fight with him against having to take more from them.
@Greggie: You said:
Somehow I knew you wouldn’t. 🙄