Quote:
Originally Posted by barney-fife";p="
Roughly half of all wage earnes pay zero federal income taxes. Zero. Half the wage earners pay nothing in federal income taxes. The top 10% wage earners pay roughly one-third of all income taxes.
If it's fairness you seek, then might I suggest all wage earners pay federal income taxes? In other words, the only fair thing to do is increase taxes on the poor.
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But you have a serious flaw in your logic. You wouldn't analyze that by the percentage of people in each category, but by the percentage contribution from income to taxes. The ratio or percentage of people in the category is secondary.
What I mean is, some group earns (for example) 60% of the income and pays 60% of the taxes. The fact that the group constitutes (say) 10% of the population is food for another discussion, but not this one.
Personally, I am in favor of a flat tax. The overabundance of schemes in the present system creates inefficiencies and waste (which Force and Java were just discussing). This system is needlessly complicated. And while JP5 is correct that this system has some designs that are based on redistribution of wealth, what is actually the case is the middle class (lower and upper) shoulders more of the burden than has been represented here.
A lot of upper middle class people
think that they are rich. If you're actually rich, you sell some of your restricted stock to pay your taxes. If you're actually rich, you have enough depreciation to cancel out most of your liability anyway. I don't think of my aunt and uncle as being "rich" (in the Donald Trump sense), though I would say they're closer to what the Cheney's made than what Bush made. When I was visiting them last year, they commented on their
harsh tax burden... it was less than what I paid
, yet my income is no where near theirs - though my taxable net income is apparently greater. Odd how they can buy a $500K house and a Land Rover for their son (cash for the SUV) and I'm sweating bullets everytime mortgage rates go up an 1/8th.
Life ain't fair, and it never will be. You're always better off near the top than at the bottom. But the tax system could be unshuffled and system made MUCH more transparent and simple... and efficient.