Posted on 04/15/2015 8:26:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's mid-April, and Karlyn Bowman - the astute public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute - has noticed something significant. Tax Day "comes and goes without a ripple," she recently wrote. There's not much fuss.
Discontent with the income tax has ebbed. To buttress the point, Bowman cited intriguing survey data. A recent Gallup Poll found that only 1 percent of Americans rated taxes the nation's top problem. In a Pew poll, respondents ranked "reforming" the tax system 16th out of 24 problems. Indeed, Gallup reports that roughly half of Americans think their income-tax burden is about right.
Of course, the other half of Americans think their burden is too high. But that's down from about 70 percent in some earlier years. What explains the mood shift? Here are four possibilities.
1) Historically, the income-tax burden isn't high. In 2014, federal individual income taxes amounted to 8.1 percent of the nation's income (gross domestic product). It's been noticeably higher. From 1995 to 2000, it averaged 8.9 percent of GDP. The tax cuts of George W. Bush - most of which have been accepted by the Obama administration - have lightened the income-tax burden. For about 80 percent of Americans, payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare exceed income taxes, says the Treasury Department.
2) The remaining income-tax burden falls mainly on the rich and the upper-middle class. From 1979 to 2011, the share of income taxes paid by the wealthiest 1 percent rose from 18 percent to 35 percent, and the share paid by the richest fifth (including the top 1 percent) rose from 65 percent to 88 percent, says the Congressional Budget Office. This reflects two factors: growing income inequality (the rich pay more because they have more) and lower tax rates on the middle class.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Gee, this warm water seems to be getting hotter, why are we on a stove?
I'd say a good explaination is that tens of millions of Americans have left the work force over the last 6 years and don't pay any taxes now. They live off of taxpayers who actually do work, so of course they are all for higher taxes.
I wonder if the half who think their income tax burden is “about right” are the same half who don’t pay any income tax.
When you have marxists and Muslim Brotherhood in the White House, taxes are the least of your problems.
You beat me to it.A nation full of parasites.
Some of what is delaying the tax revolt is the “underground / alternate economy” that social media tools like uber and craigslist are helping to create.
Once these play out and the government gets full control of the internets there will be no place to hide frlomthe tax man then the likely hood of a tax revolt will be increasing.
No it’s not over. It’s called self imposed tax cuts across the board.
There are lots of ways to pay as little tax as possible. #1 is refuse to purchase anything unnecessary.
There are lots of other ways to limit what they confiscate.
If you have two cars but really only need one, get rid of one of them. You’ll save big dollars saving in registration fees, repairs, taxes, fuel, insurance costs etc.
Get creative. cutting your own taxes is easy.
This can be done on a daily basis by tens of millions of Americans.
We feed this controlling punitive government monster as little as humanly possible.
The fact that 50 % of the American workforce pay no income tax whatsoever on a net basis may have something to do with this.
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