Surprise! Massachusetts Taxpayers Fail to Take Advantage of Opportunity to Contribute Their Fair Share

Nothing like putting their money where their mouth is. I've always suggested it was simple for greedy liberals to solve all the problems they blame on the rich for not "paying their fair share" and they could simply volunteer to pay more taxes.

But no, can't have that. After all, the left wants to have at it with your money, not their own.

Now lo and behold, look here at the numbers coming out of Massachusetts, that bastion of liberalism. Howie Carr finds a nice, juicy target and gleefully unloads.

Moonbats of Massachusetts, what about the children?

It is with deep regret that I must report to you that in this new tax season more than 99.99 percent of the Beautiful People in Massachusetts are again refusing to do the right thing on their income tax returns and voluntarily pay at the old, higher rate.

All year long, the Hope and Change crowd sanctimoniously lectures those of us who work for a living about how mean-spirited we are because we begrudge paying our “fair share” to help the layabouts who have “fallen through the cracks.”

But strangely, every year, when all they need to do is have the accountant check off a single box on their income-tax forms to solve the problems created by the Cheney presidency, the Yes-We-Can types adamantly refuse to part with a few extra bucks.

As you know, a few years back, as a gag, the Legislature passed a bill allowing the state’s pony-tailed, trust-funded liberals to voluntarily pay at the old 5.85 percent income tax rate, rather than at the reduced 5.3 percent rate.

Considering that in 2000, 40 percent of the electorate voted against cutting the state income tax, you might have expected hundreds of thousands of the blow-in drifters now squatting in Cambridge and Brookline and Amherst to voluntarily ante up.

But no. The state, it appears, is teeming with Leona Helmsleys. Taxes are for the little people, not the Beautiful People.

Here are the latest DOR numbers. As of yesterday, 640,783 individual taxpayers had filed their 2008 returns. Of those 640,783, exactly 293 opted to pay at the higher 5.85 percent rate.

Back me up on the math here. If 640,000 is the number, then 6,400 would be 1 percent, and 640 would be one-tenth of 1 percent. And 293 is less than one half of one tenth of 1 percent. So the percentage so far this year is one-twentieth of 1 percent.

Moonbats, I beseech you! Send in some more of the dough from Pater’s trust fund. Otherwise, how can we offer alms to the neediest among us, like Deval Patrick’s unemployed neighbor with the new made-up $120,000-a-year state job, and the Bulger hack who’s been collecting for 15 years and now was just handed a brand new $150,000 made-up state job?

Actually, the state claims the Beautiful People are twice as likely to check the higher-rate box this year, but two times zero is still zero. Even sadder is how much the commonwealth has collected from these 293 individuals - exactly $24,098.

Again, these are rough calculations, but I think that works out to just under $90 per filer. If $90 is .55 percent of your taxable income, you made about $18,000 in 2008.

That’s not a lot of taxable income. That’s why they all invest in municipal bonds - no taxes.

Theories abound as to why Beautiful People are so damn cheap, whether it’s evading taxes (see Geithner, Rangel, Daschle and now maybe Emanuel) or giving next to nothing to charity (see Biden, Kerry, et al.). Perhaps - make that probably - they’re just a bunch of phonies and hypocrites.

Read the rest.

H/T Lauren.