This seems as good a place as any to ask:
In reading minimum wage threads, I often find people saying that minimum wage was not designed or intended for someone to live on.
In reading tax threads, I often find people saying that nearly half pay no (federal income) taxes, and/or that the bottom half doesn’t pay enough taxes.
So how much, exactly, should someone earning minimum wage pay in taxes? (How much is ‘not enough’ and how much is enough?)
The question I’d like answered is why even a minimum wage earner doesn’t pay 10% in income tax. Is a dime out of every dollar earned too much to pay for the Federal government ?
Because the dirty little secret is that if everyone paid 10%, we could eliminate the corporate income tax — making America the best place to operate a business — and income tax revenues would actually be HIGHER than they are now. Total income tax revenues including the corporate tax revenues are generally around 9.9% of all personal income. $1.3T out of $13T personal income according to the IRS and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
When people claim we need the “rich” to pay a 35% tax rate, what they are really saying is that they need 35% from the high earners so that half the people can pay nothing and the bottom fifth can actually get “income tax” refunds for income taxes they never paid.