Quote:
Originally Posted by oLd-SouL";p="
Here's some statistics on taxes paid to the Federal Gov't:
Corporate taxes comprises about 11% of Fed Income
Individual taxes comprises about 60% of Fed Income
The rest is employment (next largest), estate, gift, and excise taxes.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/04db07co.xls
The tax breakdown by income bracket goes like this for 2003 data (data taken from other sites):
The top 1% of individual wage earners paid 34% of the Federal individual Income Tax.
The top 5% of individual wage earners paid 54% of the Federal individual Income Tax.
The top 25% of individual wage earners paid 84% of the Federal individual Income Tax.
The top 50% of individual wage earners paid 96.5% of the Federal individual Income Tax.
This means the bottom 50% of wage earners only pay 3.5% of the total individual income tax but receive an equal and/or greater share than those in the upper 50%.
So why not a tax cut for the ultra-rich. They are the ones paying the lionshare of the taxes anyways for fewer benefits. |
Federal income tax makes up well under half of all taxes collected by the US government. It is the most progressive tax but is still not nearly as progressive as you claim because I'm assuming your unsited sources are only reporting taxable income. The ultra rich generally have huge sums of money not counted as taxable income due to loop holes like tax free municiple bonds and the like.
When you look at the rest of thre taxes by the US government they are a mix of both slightly progressive and highly regressive taxes. Social security tax and medicare taxes are very regressive. Sales tax is also highly regressive due to disparities in the amount of income saved by the ultra rich and the average joe.