That's because their staffers have already told them what the top 2% is paying. If they get pinned into quoting a number, they'll have to cite a "reasonable" one. And then someone will point out that threshold is already met.
Do you know what proportion of federal individual income taxes the top 2% actually pay? I'm not trying to make you look bad. I'm just trying to point out that few people actually know.
I didn't pick 2% arbitrarily. It's where singles with 200K AGI and married couples with 250K AGI fall on the scale, according to the IRS's own data.
And according to the IRS's data, the top 2% paid 45.35% of all federal individual income taxes in 2009. That's down from 48.68% in 2007.
(David, I pinged you on this response because I realized I misread the table in my last posting to you. I accidentally read off the numbers for the top 3% earlier.)
Thank you jl.