Hastert: “If You Earn $40,000 a Year and Have a Family of Two Children, You Don’t Pay Any Taxes”

From Think Progress:

During a late session last night, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) made a stunning claim on the House floor:

Well, folks, if you earn $40,000 a year and have a family of two children, you don’t pay any taxes. So you probably, if you don’t pay any taxes, you are not going to get a very big tax cut.

I’m going to give the Speaker the benefit of the doubt here. He was talking about federal income taxes. But the problem with such a statement is that it minimizes the other taxes that the hypothetical family of four does pay. Let’s start with Social Security and Medicare. At a combined rate of 7.65%, that is $3,060.00, assuming the entire $40,000 in income comes from wages. If the income was from being self-employed, Social Security and Medicare tax would be $5,652.

In Virginia, the family would incur state income taxes of $1,491. If you assume the family spends half their income on taxable stuff, you’re looking at another $1,000 in sales taxes.

So to say that the family of four pays no taxes is, at best, misleading. It really is just a excuse to justify the huge tax reductions for the wealthy.