This headline and the story do not match- it isn't about households who pay nothing

This is the Drudge headline-
Half of U.S. households pay no income tax...

This is the Yahoo news story:
Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – As Monday's tax filing deadline nears, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation's tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.

There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

The sheer volume of credits, deductions and exemptions has both Democrats and Republicans calling for tax laws to be overhauled. House Republicans want to eliminate breaks to pay for lower overall rates, reducing the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Republicans oppose raising taxes, but they argue that a more efficient tax code would increase economic activity, generating additional tax revenue.

President Barack Obama said last week he wants to do away with tax breaks to lower the rates and to reduce government borrowing.

In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.

Notice the article really didn't care about who didn't pay at all, or even as we all know, who gets earned income tax credits, a payoff for the low income folks.  This is a soak the so called rich article. 

Taxes, taxes, and more taxes!

I get a newsletter from NRO every morning. Some interesting articles always show up.  This one is informative.

On the New Bank Tax
by Reihan Salam

Regular readers know that I have no theological objection to bank taxes. If some kind of FTT proves workable, it could be a good way to close our enormous long-term revenue shortfall. But I do think John Carney of CNBC.com is right to raise concerns about a mystery tax:

Under the new provisions added to the bill, regulators—specifically the newly created Council for Financial Stability—will be empowered to apply the tax according to a “risk matrix” that contains no fewer than 13 factors. Some of these are rather straightforward, such as requiring regulators to consider the size, leverage and reliance on short term funding of a company.

But more than a few relate to goals less strictly tied to financial stability. One of the factors to be considered is a company’s importance as “a source of credit for low-income, minority or underserved communities.” Another tells regulators to consider whether the company is an important source of credit for state and local governments.

The bill does not tell regulators exactly how to apply these factors. It could be that banks that do a lot of lending for low-income communities would be assessed a higher fee, since the failure of those banks would be more likely to result in a bailout by government officials concerned that low-income communities would be deprived of important sources of credit.

But that does not seem likely. Far more likely is that banks that lend in ways approved by the regulators—buying municipal bonds from budget-challenged states or lending to politically favored businesses—will be assessed a lower fee. They will be given credit—rather than penalized—for being an “important source of credit” for these constituencies.

Read the rest of the article to get more information on what is, or might be going on with this bill.

Waxman may have finally figured out their are laws at work here

From Beltway Confidential in the Washington Examiner:

Waxman cancels Obamacare CEO hearing

By: David Freddoso

A House Energy and Commerce Committee spokeswoman tells me that Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has indeed cancelled the April 21 subcommittee hearing in which CEOs were to testify about Obamacare. So far, the only indication of this change appears on the committee's website is on the Republican minority ranking member's site. In fact, the hearing still appears on Waxman's committee calendar for that day.

Waxman had called the hearing in reaction to public statements by several companies -- including Verizon, AT&T, and John Deere, among others -- that Obamacare would cost them hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars because it laid a new tax on their retiree health benefit payments.

Read more at the Washington Examiner.