I ran across this very interesting IRS breakdown of taxes paid by the various income brackets.

http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/01in01ts.xls

Seems to bust up a lot of myths I've heard.

Please comment...

From what I can tell it shows that the rich icreased their earnings the most while paying the lowest percentage of taxes. The average gross income of the lowest bracket did not rais ethat much over the bourse of the time table. and it shoes that teh brunt of the tax burden was paid by the middle class. The table also does not show the taxes from 2002-2004. I'd be curious to see how those look with all the tax cuts.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Take 2001, as it is the most recent. What I see is the top 1% of wage earners paid 34% of the total income tax to the Government. And the top 50% of wage earners paid 96% of the total income tax to the government.

That means that the bottom 50% of wage earners only paid 4% of the total income tax to the government. But I'd love to see what % of the government's resources they receive back. I get a little testy when I hear that the evil rich folks don't pay their fair share. The truth is, the evil rich folks don't receive their fair share.

I very much like the fact that someone actually posted the numbers, but these aren't all of them. Where are the numbers for the bottom half of the country? Where are the numbers for 2002-2004? Numbers are good, but I just don't think these ones paint the full picture. Make sense?

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Well, when you only have 4% to post for the bottom half, there's not much to consider...

They won’t be out for a while, these numbers take a while to compile. You can find estimated numbers on the IRS website.

You have been given the total and the number for the top 50%... how hard can it be to calculate the #’s for the bottom 50%??? If there are 5 apples total and the top 50% have 3, then how many do the bottom 50% have?

If that’s the case you either need to A) look again, or B) sue your math teacher (the first part of what you said is correct).

For the year 2000, the richest of the rich (top 1%) made 17.5% of all the income in this country, but paid 33.9% of the income taxes.

Put another way:
Top 1%: Had 27% of their income taken by the income tax
1-5%: Had 19% taken
5-10%: Had 15% taken
10-25%: Had 12% taken
25-50%: Had 9% taken
Bottom 50%: Had 4% taken

This should not be surprising. This is how a progressive tax system works. It is not the case and has never been the case that the rich are “paying the lowest percentage of taxes.”

This is very true. I calculated average incomes for each group back to 1980. After adjusting for inflation, I calculate that from 1980-2001, the average income for the top 1% has increased by 146%, ($351,295 to $865,454) while the average income for the bottom 50% has decreased by 7% ($14,677 to $13,593).

Liberty, you seem to have a good understanding on taxes, perhaps you could help me out. On the diagram, what is the difference between the average tax rate and the adjusted gross income share? I am the first to admit that my understanding of our countries taxes is not great.

-Demosthenes

__________________
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The average tax rate refers to the proportion of income that was paid in taxes, thus a rate of 25 means that of your income for that year, 25% was paid to the government as income tax. A higher tax rate means you pay a larger proportion of your income to taxes.

The adjusted gross income share refers to the proportion of the total adjusted gross income that came from a particular group. Thus, the income share of 17.5 for the top 1% in 2001 means that of all the personal income reported to the IRS, 17.5% was generated by the richest 1%. The numbers are cumulative, so the 86.19 share for the top 50% includes everyone in the previous groups. If you want to divide into quintiles, then you have to subtract the share from each group to left of the one you want to calculate, for 2001 this would be:

top 1%: 17.5 -->"The Rich"
1-5%: 14.5
5-10%: 11.1
10-25%: 22.1
25-50% 21.0
Bottom 50%: 13.8 -->"The Poor"

Thus, the combined incomes of the richest 1% of taxpayers was roughly 25% higher than the combined incomes of the poorest 50% in 2001.

Good information that everyone should learn.

The arguement the democrats and the poor use, however, is that the rich people pay a lot of taxes yes, but they also own tons of property. I don't know the exact figures but the arguement I have heard is that the top 50% of taxpayers pay 95% of the income taxes, but they own 95% of the property/companies too, so yeah they should be paying that much.