According to an analysis of 2007 IRS statistics, the average taxpayer residing in New York City’s posh Helmsley Building — owned before her death by Leona Helmsley, who once reportedly said that “only the little people pay taxes” — paid only 14.7 percent of his income in federal taxes.
At the same time, New York City janitors and security guards — such as those employed by the Helmsley Building — paid about 24 percent.
Helmsley residents were taxed less for Social Security and Medicare, and much of their $1.17 million average income was in capital gains, which are taxed at the same rate as the wages of modestly paid (up to $34,000 a year) workers.
Not to
mention
its
working girls
Earlier this year, Wisconsin state Rep. Gordon Hintz was caught up in an ongoing investigation of prostitution at the Heavenly Touch Massage Parlor in Appleton that resulted in six arrests.
Police merely issued Hintz a municipal citation — indicating that he might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nonetheless, Hintz refused to discuss the matter.
“I am willing to take responsibility for my actions,” he said, but “my concern right now” is not to be “distracted from the much more important issue” of “standing up for Wisconsin’s working families.”
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)