Friday, July 31, 2009

The rich don't pay enough


For those who want to believe in the myth that the rich don't pay enough here's a piece from the Tax Foundation on the breakdown..........

Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.

Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.

Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

Yeah, wait till they get to pick up my health care tab......


More.......

1 comment:

Harold Thomas said...

If you're rich enough to be in the top 1%, you're rich enough to emigrate. I imagine there are going to be a lot of rich emigrants shortly, when the Feds start trying to soak them for health care.