[Phantom Lord]

The upper 10 % pay the majority of the taxes in this country.

You believe you misquoted the IRS. Maybe you would like to link to the stat on the IRS site.

I will make one change to the above post. Lets limit it to income taxes.

A majority of income taxes are paid by the top 5% of wage earners. They pay 53.25%. Change it to the top 10% and they pay 64.89%.

[Your Nightmare]

A majority of income taxes are paid by the top 5% of wage earners. They pay 53.25%. Change it to the top 10% and they pay 64.89%.

You statistics are worthless without telling us what share of income those percentiles made. (They're old stats, too.) This is a typical trick to make federal taxes in general, and income taxes specifically, appear much more progressive than they are. In 2001 (the year of your stats), the top 10% of earners made 43.11% of all the income and paid 64.89% of income taxes. And this ignores the more regressive taxes like payroll taxes.

Using more recent data, a more complete measure of income(comprehensive household income), and overall tax burden, the CBO shows that in 2004 the top 10% income earners made 38.8% of all the income and paid 70.8% of federal income taxes but that they paid 52.3% of all federal taxes.