July 31, 2009

THE RICH ARE GETTING HOSED

Via The Corner:

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

1 This results, of course, in a large ground of voters who have no incentive to suppose government spending programs because they're pretty sure that *they* won't be paying for them.

(Which is only partly true--they'll certainly be paying for increases in corporate taxes, in the form of higher prices)

Less obviously, there are also several million high-income people who *will* pay higher taxes under Obamaism...but who will benefit so much from the Obama/Pelosi/Reid programs that they will still come out way ahead. Trial lawyers, for example. University and K-12 top administrators. Congresscreatures and senior government officials.

Posted by: david foster at July 31, 2009 12:58 PM (uWlpq)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
43kb generated in CPU 0.0131, elapsed 0.1028 seconds.
49 queries taking 0.0937 seconds, 198 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.