Top 50% of Wage Earners Pay 96.09% of Income Taxes

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ ^ | October 23, 2002 | RUSH

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Only The Rich Pay Taxes

Top 50% of Wage Earners Pay 96.09% of Income Taxes

October 23, 2002

The IRS has released the FY 2000 data for individual income tax returns. The numbers illustrate a truth that will startle you: that half of Americans with the highest incomes pays 96.09% of all income tax. This nukes the liberal lie that the rich don't pay taxes. The top 1%, who earn 20.81% of all income covered under the income tax, are paying 37.42% of the federal tax bite.

Think of it this way: less than four dollars out of every $100 paid in income taxes in the United States is paid by someone in the bottom 50% of wage earners. Are the top half millionaires? Noooo, more like "thousandaires." The top 50% were those individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $26,000 and up in 1999. (The top 1% earned $293,000-plus.) Americans who want to are continuing to improve their lives - and those who don't want to, aren't. Here are the wage earners in each category and the percentages they pay:

Top 5% - 56.47% of all income taxes; Top 10% - 67.33% of all income taxes; Top 25% - 84.01% of all income taxes. Top 50% - 96.09% of all income taxes. The bottom 50%? They pay a paltry 3.91% of all income taxes. The top 1% is paying more than ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 1%! And who earns what? The top 1% earns 20.81% of all income. The top 5% earns 35.30% of the pie. The top 10% earns 46.01%; the top 25% earns 67.15%, and the top 50% earns 87.01% of all the income.

The Rich Earned Their Dough, They Didn't Inherit It (Except Ted Kennedy)

The bottom 50% is paying a tiny bit of the taxes, so you can't give them much of a tax cut by definition. Yet these are the people to whom the Democrats claim to want to give tax cuts. Remember this the next time you hear the "tax cuts for the rich" business. Understand that the so-called rich are about the only ones paying taxes anymore.

I had a conversation with a woman who identified herself as Misty on Wednesday. She claimed to be an accountant, yet she seemed unaware of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which now ensures that everyone pays some taxes. AP reports that the AMT, "designed in 1969 to ensure 155 wealthy people paid some tax," will hit "about 2.6 million of us this year and 36 million by 2010." That's because the tax isn't indexed for inflation! If your salary today would've made you mega-rich in '69, that's how you're taxed.

Misty tried the old line that all wealth is inherited. Not true. John Weicher, as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank, wrote in his February 13, 1997 Washington Post Op-Ed, "Most of the rich have earned their wealth... Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation." What's happening here is not that "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." The numbers prove it.

I have made an executive decision as the owner and ultimate editor of this website that this table and these numbers stay on this website forever - or until next year's numbers come out. In order to get these facts, you have to see them each and every day. This story, along with a link to the IRS chart, will stay somewhere on the RushLimbaugh.com homepage so everyone can see and find these numbers at any time. It's crucial that people get this, so please, share it with a friend now!

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Income Tax: Who Pays? IRS Figures for 2000

[ancient_geezer]

Bump for later

[NEWwoman]

Good post. We need to be reminded about this every election cycle.

Even better - move election day to April 16th.

[ghostrider]

Top 50% of Wage Earners Pay 96.09% of Income Taxes

Of the bottom 50%, what is the average wage and what would be left after paying for bare essentials that the welfare system would otherwise provide, such a like food, medical, shelter, transportation and utilities. A more meaningful comparison might be disposable personal income, after covering the essentials that government would otherwise get socked with.

[RAT Patrol]

Rush should put this side by side with a chart showing who receives the most government money. The contrast should be very telling.

[The Westerner]

This won't last. The collective Atlas' will shrug to stop paying the collective Pauls.

[ancient_geezer]

blockquote>

. A more meaningful comparison might be disposable personal income,

For what it is worth, this link [ http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3089&sequence=11 ] goes to the latest analysis done by CBO of federal total effective tax rates by income class, and the effective rates for the individual income tax itself.

 

Total income defined as all family cash (aftertax) income + proportion of total federal taxes extracted from that income class through immediate taxation and indirect routes such as consumption expenditure or lower wage etc. Income include entitlement payment, benefits etc.

 

A household consists of the people who share a housing unit, regardless of the relationships among them.

Comprehensive household income equals pretax cash income plus income from other sources. Pretax cash income is the sum of wages, salaries, self-employment income, rents, taxable and nontaxable interest, dividends, realized capital gains, cash transfer payments, and retirement benefits plus taxes paid by businesses (corporate income taxes and the employer's share of Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment insurance payroll taxes) and employee contributions to 401(k) retirement plans. Other sources of income include all in-kind benefits (Medicare, Medicaid, employer-paid health insurance premiums, food stamps, school lunches and breakfasts, housing assistance, and energy assistance). Households with negative income are excluded from the lowest income category but are included in totals.

Individual income taxes are distributed directly to households paying those taxes. Payroll taxes are distributed to households paying those taxes directly or paying them indirectly through their employers. Federal excise taxes are distributed to households according to their consumption of the taxed good or service. Corporate income taxes are distributed to households according to their share of capital income.

a. Income categories are defined by ranking all people by their comprehensive household income adjusted for household size--that is, divided by the square root of the household's size. Quintiles, or fifths, of the income distribution contain equal numbers of people.

Have fun.

[liberallarry]

The bottom 50% of the population is earning 13% of all income and paying 4% of all taxes.

The top 1% is paying more than ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom BUT my guess is they are earning more than 1000 times as much

Limbaugh statistics read in a slightly different way.
It's a wonder we don't have an immediate revolution.

[Hunble]

It appears from your link that the bottom 50% actually are taxed at a higher rate than the top 1% of earners. So, yes, the bottom 50% do pay less in an aggregate, but they are paying more of their income in taxes than the rich. This whole argument has always been disingenous and dishonest, IMHO.

You have me absolutly stumped. How do you arrive at this conclusion?

[liberallarry]

Correction. That should read

The top 1% is paying more than ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 1% BUT my guess is they are earning more than 1000 times as much

[Hunble]

Yes, 1% of $1,000 = $10

1% of $1 = 1 cent

And your point is?

[liberallarry]

People who have big incomes pay big taxes.
People who have little incomes pay little taxes

1% of the population has huge incomes
50% of the population have tiny incomes.
25% of the population have virtually no incomes.

Rush is wrong about the percentages as well.

[Hunble]

Now since each and every citizen of America is only allowed to cast one vote on election day...

And since every single citizen is represented equally by our elected officials.

And since every single citizen should recieve an equal share of the services provided by our government.

Care to explain to me why only 50% of the citizens are paying for our goverment?

[ancient_geezer]

BUT my guess

How about some figures instead of propaganda.

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3089&sequence=12

As far as the distribution of cash incomes go the following table is enlightening:

 

Distributional Estimates Using Household Cash Income, by Dollar Income Category, 1979-1997 

Table H-1a. Effective Federal Tax Rates for All Households, by Dollar Income Category, Using Household Cash Income Plus Taxes Paid by Businesses, 1979-1997 (In percent)
												1997
Income Category		1979	1981	1983	1985	1987	1989	1991	1993	1995		Under 1997 Law		Under 2000 Law
Total Effective Federal Tax Rate
$0 to $10,000		8.2	7.3	7.1	8.3	8.6	7.9	8.1	8.0	6.9		7.2		7.1
$10,000 to $20,000		11.2	11.3	11.2	12.6	12.0	11.6	11.5	11.4	10.1		9.7		9.6
$20,000 to $30,000		16.2	16.9	15.9	16.8	16.0	16.1	16.1	16.1	16.1		15.6		15.0
$30,000 to $40,000		19.3	19.8	18.3	18.8	18.6	18.5	18.5	18.7	19.0		18.7		17.9
$40,000 to $50,000		21.2	21.9	20.1	20.2	20.2	20.7	20.5	20.9	21.4		20.8		20.0
$50,000 to $75,000		23.0	24.0	21.9	22.2	21.9	22.3	22.4	22.8	23.4		22.9		22.1
$75,000 to $100,000		24.3	25.7	23.1	23.4	23.8	24.0	24.1	24.7	25.5		24.6		24.0
$100,000 to $150,000		26.2	27.2	24.0	24.1	25.1	25.0	25.3	26.1	26.9		26.0		25.7
$150,000 to $200,000		29.8	28.5	24.3	24.3	26.6	26.0	26.6	27.3	28.7		27.8		27.6
$200,000 and Over		36.2	31.4	26.7	25.8	29.5	28.3	28.6	32.5	35.1		32.4		31.9
	All Categories	23.4	23.5	21.2	21.8	22.6	22.8	22.6	23.8	24.9		24.6		24.1

[Koblenz]

I am certainly in favor of lower taxes. However, there are two problems with this analysis:

1) Fica hasn't been included

2) It's based on reported income. Sure, the people that have the highest Adjusted Gross Income are going to pay the most taxes. But if you have someone who made $1 million, has $600,000 in deductions, he'll be listed as having $400,000 in income, not $1 million. So the entire calculation is faulty.

[meyer]

People who have big incomes pay big taxes.
People who have little incomes pay little taxes

That's to be expected but it would be much better if it were exactly proportionate. That is, everyone should pay the same proportion of their income in taxes. One who makes $1000 should pay 10% or $10. One who makes $100,000 should pay 10,000 or 10%. That's the only fair way to do it and the only way to ensure that selective tax cuts aren't used to buy votes.

[Don Corleone]

God only asks for 10%. Where does government get off asking for more? BTW we revolted against King George due to a tax rate that was LESS than 10 per cent.

[Hunble]

I am fair.

If I am paying 3 times what my neighbor is, to support our goverment, can my vote be counted 3 times more than his in the next election?

[liberallarry]

Care to explain to me why only 50% of the citizens are paying for our goverment?

Because only 50% of the citizenry has any money to pay for it...or any money at all. I would have thought that was clear from the statistics.