On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Jon Pruente [email protected] wrote:
The latest taxes stats that I've seen (for 2006) showed that the top 1% of tax payers paid almost half the taxes paid. That's nearly double the amount paid when taxes were higher under Carter. People like to hate the Bush tax cuts, but they are working. The proof is in the pudding. The top 51% of tax payers? They pay 97.something% of all taxes paid.
I think you should have qualified the taxes paid. You might have meant 97% of Income Taxes paid not all taxes paid.
The IRA's site shows: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html
Tax Stats at a Glance
Summary of Collections Before Refunds by Type of Return, FY 2007 [1]
Type of Return Number of Returns Gross Collections
Millions of $)
Individual income tax [1] 138,893,908 1,366,241 Corporation income tax [1] 2,507,728 [2] 395,536 Employment taxes [1] 30,740,592 849,733 [3] Excise taxes [1] 907,165 53,050 Gift tax [1] 252,522 2,420 Estate tax [1] 49,924 24,558
This works out to Empoyment taxes (FICA and some others see the footnote) being 31.5% of the total. Even if one assumes that the upper 51% pay 100% of all the other taxes that still leave the upper 51% needing to pay about 90% of the Employment taxes to get to 97% of all taxes. Given the flat nature of this tax (~12%) for moneys earned under about $91k and the elimination of the tax on moneys over this mark, I think "income" is the qualifier that should have been used in your statement.
This data is form FY 2007, but I can't think of any big tax changes from '06 to '07 that would make this inaccurate. You said your data was from 2006. What was the source? It may have contained a qualifier as to the type of tax. Maybe it contain state and locale tax data?
Rod