Posted on 07/10/2012 1:19:18 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Wealthy Americans earn about 50 percent of all income but pay nearly 70 percent of the federal tax burden, according to the latest analysis Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office though the agency said the very richest have seen their share of taxes fall the past few years.
CBO looked at 2007 through 2009 the latest years data are available, but enough to include the early effects of the last recession and found the bottom 20 percent of American earners paid just three-tenths of a percent of the total federal tax burden, while the richest 20 percent paid 67.9 percent of taxes.
The top 1 percent, whom President Obama has made a target during the presidential campaign, earned 13.4 percent of all pre-tax income but paid 22.3 percent of taxes in 2009, CBO said. When tax burden is figured in, the top 1 percent took in only 11.5 percent of income.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
FUBO
the cute stat game here is... of taxpayers
140m file tax returns ... of the 310m (340m if you count the illegals) in the country
so when they say the top 20% pay 68% of the taxes... that means about 28m people, or 8.2% of the population
it’s also a well known stat that the top 50% pay for everything, as the bottom 50% pay less then 3% of all taxes... but again, that’s of TAX FILERS
50% pay for everything...
or 70m people
or 21%
if you feel like you’re being taken advantage of... it’s because you are
Here are lots of graph from the last set of date, ending in 2007:
US Federal Taxes by Income Level 1979-2007
Until now, that was the last data that the CBO has published. The IRS has published data up to 2009, but for federal individual income tax only:
US Federal Individual Income Taxes by Income Level 2001-2009
I've written an extensive posting about this data here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2903291/posts
It will take a while before I can build similar graphs from this new data.
bookmark
bump for later
The burden of taxes have been shifting more and more onto the "rich" over the past 30 years. In the past 2 years, the average tax rates for the bottom 80% of taxpayers has dropped significantly. Despite that, their SHARE of federal taxes has gone up.
In contrast, the tax rates for the top 20% have (proportionally) dropped much less, or even held steady. But, since their income has been significantly reduced, the tax revenue from that segment has been reduced as well -- and their share of federal taxes has shrunk.
This is yet another folly of depending on significant tax revenue from the "rich": their income rises and falls with the economy, much more so than everyone else. So, when times are bad, the impact on tax revenue is magnified by the dependency on the "rich".
There's a tax return for each HOUSEHOLD, which doesn't necessarily mean one taxpayer.
Let’s see those numbers again after adjusting for all of the Federal aid those bottom 20 percent take. Just measuring a person’s income vs taxes is an inaccurate picture of the truth.. or just an out and out lie. When you factor in the 34,000 or so dollars a year in Federal, state, local funds and benefits, let’s look again. I am waiting, just not holding my breath.
“Suppose that every day 10 men go to a restaurant for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If it was paid the way we pay our taxes, the first four men would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1; the sixth would pay $3; the seventh $7; the eighth $12; the ninth $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.”
The 10 men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20.” Now dinner for the 10 only costs $80. The first four are unaffected. They still eat for free. Can you figure out how to divvy up the $20 savings among the remaining six so that everyone gets his fair share? The men realize that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33, but if they subtract that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being paid to eat their meal.
The restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same percentage, being sure to give each a break, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so now the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of $59.
Outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” complained the sixth man, pointing to the tenth, “and he got $7!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got seven times more than me!”
“That’s true,” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor.”
Then, the nine men surrounded the tenth man (the richest one, paying the most) and beat him up. The next night the richest man didn’t show up for dinner, so now the nine men sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They were $52 short!
“And that, boys, girls and college instructors, is how America’s tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table any more. There are lots of good restaurants in Switzerland and the Caribbean.”
The CBO accounts for those transfer payments in their analysis. As a result, the average federal individual income tax rates for the bottom 40% are actually negative.
Here's the original data, in an Excel workbook:
http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43373-Supplemental_Tables_Final.xls
Those are some great numbers.. Thanks for the link. My point is, the media never, ever presents the negative tax rates of the.. Forty Seven Percent of folks. Colonel West was right.. leaving the plantation of dependency is not appetizing. It doesn’t help that we have no alternate plan to offer, save for returning responsibility to individuals and locals.
Consider becoming a monthly donor.
It's easy, and with enough participants
we could eliminate FReepathons.
Kinda puts a LOT of things in perspective, doesn’t it? I have a whole new respect for Jethro Bodine.
That is 50% of 140m tax returns. Many of those returns are married couple filing jointly where both work, so the number is greater than 70m people. How many greater? I’m not sure. Your point is still valid, but it is greater than 21% of the poeple.
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