Cowboys, the rich, and buying artwork

I was listening to the radio today and heard some amazing statistics from a recently released report on who pays what taxes on this country. A Wall Street Journal writer was discussing the stats from the latest release of Internal Revenue Service data on individual income taxes and (I think) a WSJ article will discuss them tomorrow in an editorial.

One of my pet peeves is the fact that in super wealthy areas such as Bethesda, Reston, Potomac, and generally most of the Greater DC area, it still takes a lot of work to get the same people who don't think twice about dropping a few grand for a sofa, to spend a couple of hundred bucks for a fine arts photograph.

There are nine million people in the United States who are classified as millionaires. If memory serves me right, there are around 125,000 of them living within the Greater Washington, DC area.

Don't believe everything that politicians tell you - from neither party! According to the WSJ reporter summarizing from the IRS report, the top 1% income earners in this nation pay 39.4% of all income taxes - an all-time high.

And they're not all the uberrich getting away with tax murder via offshore investments, blah, blah, blah, that politicians from both parties are always so fond of discussing.

The dirty little secret is that most of this 1% are folks who make $350K a year or higher and 2/3 of them are small business owners.

The top 5% (people who make $175K or higher) pay 59.5% of all income taxes. The bottom 50% of Americans, or half of all income tax payers below the median, pay 3% of all income taxes in this nation.

Those are hard, cold facts - not party-colored slogans burying the truth in search for votes.

And here's an idea for that top five percent of Americans carrying almost 60% of the American tax burden; specifically to the business owners in the bunch: support your local galleries and local artists! There's a tax benefit in there for you.

Instead of hanging motivational posters and pretty reproductions in your offices and factories and workplaces, buy original artwork from your local galleries and artists and that expense is not only a tax write-off, but also helps to kindle the local arts in your hometowns and neighborhoods.

Willie Nelson sings "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys; Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks; Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such..."

And then let them use their doctorin' and lawyerin' dough to buy some local artwork for their offices and support their local artists.

And cowboys can buy Western art.