Reply #64: The top 0.1% of taxpayers (141,000 returns, average income 7.4 million) gets 12% of all income & [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

pays 20% of all income taxes.

The top 1% gets 23% of all income (AGI of $410K or more) & pays 40% of income taxes.

The top 5% gets about 38% of all income and pays 60% of all income taxes.

The bottom 75% gets 30% of all income & pays 13% of all income taxes.


The bottom 75%, since they have no effective connections, money, insider information or lobbying power, is not responsible for the debt the government ran up.

Nor are they responsible for paying it back, as they pay very little income tax (the bottom 50% very little at all).

But every one of them that works gets 6.2% of their check taken right off the top, & another 6.2% of their compensation off the top as the "employers'" (tax-deductible) portion: 12.4% tax rate.

It's THEIR money that was "borrowed" for bush's tax cuts, more than half of which went to the top 5%.

It's the top that needs to pay the money back.

Rescind the bush tax cuts on the top.

It's not "WE".

CAPITAL borrowed from LABOR.

Get it straight: Labor pays social security, capital pays income taxes.

And that's not even considering CORPORATE returns; corporations are getting off cheaper than ever since the robber baron era.