[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[RightWhale]

It's a clear picture, but needs to be stated in a catchy slogan-style way to defeat that Democrat slogan about 'tax breaks for the rich.' It has to be 5 words or less, monosyllabic words.

[cynicom]

What was the per centage of money earned by those categories?????

[SamAdams76]

See my profile for the way taxes ought to be.

[M Kehoe]

John, Hank, Wyatt, et. al. were right.

5.56mm

[supercat]

The statistics I would like to see are: if people are divided into two groups, with every person in the first group each paying more taxes than any person in the second, and if 50% of total income is earned by each group, what portion of income tax revenues are paid by each group. Likewise FICA-scam revenues. Etc. I'd also like to see the breakouts for the top and bottom quartiles, as well as stats on what portion of income is earned by those who pay half the taxes.

Those figures would be much more meaningful than the per-capita breakdowns.

[parsifal]

Pardon moi, but by my math---90% of the top 50% of taxpayers pay only 40% of the taxes.

To check my math, if 50% pay 96.09% of taxes and 5% pay 56.47% of the taxes, then 45% pay 39.68% of the taxes. This means that 45%/50% or 90% of the top payers pay 40% of the taxes. Looks like most of the top guys aren't carrying their load.

parsy the fair and just.

[Zon]

Replace the graduated income tax with a consumption tax such as the NRST -- national retail sales tax where, if you don't want to pay the tax don't buy the item.

Replacing the graduated income tax with a NRST would set off a chain reaction of benefits.

1. Boom the economy because productivity is not taxed; no tax on profits or hidden taxes/fees.
2. IRS threats and coercion eliminated and replaced with, if you don't want to pay the tax, don't buy the item.
3. 20% decrease in retail prices facilitates spending and partally offsets the retail tax.
4. People will know how much leviathan government is really costing them, resulting in...
5. Shrinking government to it's constitutional function to protect synonymous private-property rights and individual rights from domestic and foreign criminals while upholding the sanctity of private contracts.
6. Freedom in United States leads to other countries doing similar or risk its citizens fleeing to United States to increase productivity here while enjoying the fruits/prosperity of their labor.

Replacing the graduated income tax with a NRST is not an end all be all. It's but one of five key factors for collapsing a corrupt government while allowing a fair and honest government to rise in its place.

[fso301]

I'll read this later

[GOPJ]

Bump for later.

[Action-America]

Interestingly, the original IRS data from which Rush derived his numbers, was structured backwards, to make it more difficult to understand.  Instead of the top 1%, they had the bottom 99%.  Instead of the top 5%, they had the bottom 95% and so on.  The numbers are not nearly as telling that way.  I wonder why they did it that way.  Yeah, right!

I downloaded the IRS Data and built a spreadsheet, based upon the downloaded data (that is also included).  Using simple formulas, I restructured the data to reflect the top "x%"of each category, rather than the bottom.  The numbers come out to be the same as Rush's, but as a spreadsheet, you can do all kinds of corelations.  I will post it on the Action America web site by Thursday (10/24) noon CDT, for anyone who is interested.

 

[Samwise]

But there is no sense in using this information to argue with liberals. They won't allow themselves to be confused by the facts.

[SeeRushToldU_So]

Rush said this was going to be a permanent addition to the web site. The message needs to be out that when the dims say "Tax cuts for the rich" the rich is defined as anyone making $53,000 per year !

I hardly call $53,000 per year rich.

[VOA]

bump