Those poor rich people
The Tax Foundation announced Wednesday that in 2007, more taxes were paid by the top 1% (40% of total income tax revenues) than the bottom 95% (39% of total income tax revenues). They claim that this data "clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes."
I suppose one might see it that way. At least until one examines the data provided on their own web site and notes that the top 1% earned almost 23% of income (adjusted gross income), and the bottom 95% earned 64% of income. I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the people earning the top 23% of income would be paying about as much in total income taxes as the people earning the bottom 64%.
The minimum income of people in the top 1% was $410,096, and their average tax rate was 22.45%. Sounds to me like there was still plenty of money left over after paying taxes...
(For those of you outside of the U.S., this tax rate is only for the federal taxes. Most states also separately assess state income taxes, which might conceivably amount to as much as 11% of income for the super-rich in certain states.)
Edited to add: As gsh pointed out in comments, there are also payroll taxes to be considered, which include 7.65% for social security and medicare, or 15.3% for the self-employed. This only applies to the first $106,800 of income; after that amount, only the 2.9% medicare tax is owed, so it disproportionately affects people who make less money. If I have time, I will come back to this later and see if I can approximate the impact of the payroll taxes.
I suppose one might see it that way. At least until one examines the data provided on their own web site and notes that the top 1% earned almost 23% of income (adjusted gross income), and the bottom 95% earned 64% of income. I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the people earning the top 23% of income would be paying about as much in total income taxes as the people earning the bottom 64%.
The minimum income of people in the top 1% was $410,096, and their average tax rate was 22.45%. Sounds to me like there was still plenty of money left over after paying taxes...
(For those of you outside of the U.S., this tax rate is only for the federal taxes. Most states also separately assess state income taxes, which might conceivably amount to as much as 11% of income for the super-rich in certain states.)
Edited to add: As gsh pointed out in comments, there are also payroll taxes to be considered, which include 7.65% for social security and medicare, or 15.3% for the self-employed. This only applies to the first $106,800 of income; after that amount, only the 2.9% medicare tax is owed, so it disproportionately affects people who make less money. If I have time, I will come back to this later and see if I can approximate the impact of the payroll taxes.