who pays most of the money taken in as taxes?

[booley]

Got into an arguement with freeper/idiot ( I know, I'm being redundent)

but anyway he said that the rich pay 65% of the taxes.

Is it just me or does this seem a little..hard ot beleive? I mean, the federal government takes in TRILLIONS. There would have to be a lot more multi-billionaires then we seem to have 9and these guys sure don't look liek they are struggling)

So is there any reliable sources for where the tax money comes from and where it goes?

[Sloppyfourths]

1. I'd like to know too

[Born Free]

8. republican do not count taxes collected for social security

Whenever they do the tax numbers, they do not include payroll deductions, and as you know these taxes being collected to social security are now being used to pay the general fund - which makes them a genuine tax, not jsut a savings club as republicans call it. The bad part about it is these taxes are regressive, they are capped at about 87 thousand a year, if you earn more than that you do not pay taxes on any amount above 87 thousand a year. This puts mor of a burden on the lower wage working Americans.

[AP]

17. They also don't include property and sales tax and other state, local, fed

taxes and fees. And that's where a ton of regressivity in the tax code comes from.

Take CA for instance: it has an incredibly regressive property tax which taxes big businesses at 1980 property valuations, and the middle class at valuations from the last five years -- the peak of property valuations. It also taxes cap gains as income (which is progressive compared to states which flat tax it regardless of how much you get) but have a top tax band which stops at 100 and something thousand, which is basically a flat tax on anyone earning over that limit. CA has the most progressive state tax code in America, but it's still incredibly regressive.

[stepnw1f]

2. Excellent Question

[lapfog_1]

3. Here is the IRS answer...

but I believe that this has been corrected somewhat just this last
week by the CBO

Share of Individual Income Taxes and Income, 1990-2001
Share of Individual Income Taxes


Top 1% Top 5% Top 10% Top 25% Top 50%

2001 33.9 53.3 64.9 82.9 96.0

[AP]

18. The other number you need to know is the % of total income those

percentiles declared (ie, the percentage of all (declared) income they earned).

The top 1% paid a third of the taxes, but might have earned half of all the income decllared.

Incidentally, I remember reading that the top 1% of income earners in the US own over 90% of the stocks in America (even though 50% of all Americans own some stock). So all those benefits of the low taxes on cap gains and dividends are going to a very small % of Americans (and I bet most of the losses from Enron and World Com and the rest are accruing to people with stocks in 401ks who don't pay much attention to their accounts or were locked out from trading when the stocks' prices were plumetting, which was the case in Enron.)

[lapfog_1]

21. I'm, sure you are right

but I was just answering the question that was asked.

The discrepancy between the "haves" and the "have nots" has
increased dramatically in the last 3 to 4 years. Soon, the
middle class will only be made up of mid-level white collar
managers. Everyone else will either be working poor (or just
poor) and the remaining 1 to 2 percent will become what I am
calling the "ownership class" (or what Shrub calls "his base").

[AP]

26. I believe the bottom quintile's average net worth is -$10K.

It's amazing that a significant % of Americans do not have a positive net worth. (I wonder where the line is if 20% are worth on avg -10K -- could it be around the 35th percentile?).

Many Americans are now wage slaves. Sure, lots of people have lots of things they bought on credit, but those assets are depreciating, and it'd be hard to sell them off to pay off the loans you took out to buy those things. But you don't have real power in America unless you have economic power. And you don't have economic power when you're in debt.

[davekriss]

23. You're probably aware of this...

But, since most of that "50% who own some stock" own it in the form of tax-deferred retirement plans (IRA's, 401k's), they receive NO benefit from the downward shift in tax rates on capital gains and dividends. When individuals retire and begin to tap these funds, the withdrawals will be taxed as ordinary income.

If anyone own stocks and they're entirely in retirement plans, and if they believe they received some kind of a "tax savings" from Bush in this area, then they live in delusion.

However, if you happen to fall in the top 1% and receive substantial non-sheltered income from capital gains and dividends, then you made out like a bandit.

Why any of the remaining 99% would vote for GWB is beyond me.

[AP]

27. And clearly there's no guarantee that there will be a tax benefit when you

retire.

The advantage of the 401k lies in the notion that you'll be in a lower income tax bracket when you retire then you would have been in when you received that money as ordinary income.

If Bush replaces income tax with a national sales tax of 30%, or if you retire and dicover that you pay more than 30% on that income, you might have been better off without the IRA.

[The White Rose]

4. Presume you mean income tax?

What about the FICA tax, Medicare and sales tax which hit lower incomes the hardest? While your at it you might mention all those hidden "taxes" like college fees and health insurance premiums which are eviscerating the middle class. And please remind them that the wealthy continue to receive the lion's share of the advantages available in our society from kindergarten onwards, and that getting rid of the estate tax (which only affects about 2% of Americans) will help secure that unfair playing field for future generations of the super-rich.

Do the rich pay most of the income tax in the US? Yes. It's the least they can do...

[Feanorcurufinwe]

5. Thank you. Now I don't have to say it. nt

[K-W]

6. Yes, but what percentage of the wealth do they have?

And how many of them will be hurting for food, water, and shelter because they get taxed more?

[baldguy]

11. As on 1997, the top 1% owned 39.1% of the wealth.

The top 5% owned 61.4%, the top 10% owned 72.8%.

The top 10% owned almost THREE-QUARTERS of the wealth in this country in 1997. And since then, it's only gotten worse.

http://karmak.org/archive/2004/04/income&wealth.htm

[tkmorris]

7. It might be more useful to ask

who pays the largest percentage of their income in taxes, and include all taxes not just income taxes.

The answer to that is, the middle class. Yes, believe it or not, they pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the rich do. And it's getting worse.

[NJCher]

9. add'l info

Here's an article that just appeared in the Post. Sorry I don't have the URL but you can put the headline in search and turn it up:

washingtonpost.com
Tax Burden Shifts to the Middle
Presidential Campaigns Draw Differing Conclusions From Report
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 13, 2004; Page A04
Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the presidential election campaign.
The CBO study, due to be released today, found that the wealthiest 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes drop from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent.
Over that same period, taxpayers with incomes from around $51,500 to around $75,600 saw their share of federal tax payments increase. Households earning around $75,600 saw their tax burden jump the most, from 18.7 percent of all taxes to 19.5 percent.


...more


Cher

[AP]

19. Not only are they paying more, but when the gov't does less because they

are not collecting enough taxes from the rich, it's not the rich who suffer. It's the same people who are paying more in taxes whose schools are getting worse, and whose county hospitals are falling apart, and whose neighbors are losing opportunities. The costs of or fed, state and loal governments falling apart do not hurt the rich the way they hurt the middle class. Yale will never have a problem filling up their classes with the children of the rich. But all the people you need to fill up all the key jobs in American -- school teachers, emergency room doctors, etc. -- aren't coming from Yale.

[REP]

10. Unmarried Couples with No Children

We get fucking reamed by taxes, and get the least back (we've paid back for our public education many times over, don't use playgrounds or subsidized daycare, etc).

[alcuno]

12. 1million paying 1million = 1 trillion dollars. About 50% of revenues

Boo Hoo. The wealthy are laughing their heads off at the little average people worrying about their tax burden. Why? Because if you earn 10 million dollars and the government takes 3 million, you still have 7 million dollars left to spend.

Explain this one to me. The guy earning 80k/year and the guy earning 8 million/year pay THE EXACT SAME AMOUNT IN PAYROLL TAXES. Like I said, the wealthy are laughing their heads off.

[booley]

13. Bump and question

and can anyone tell me what effect these tax cuts have had on state taxes? I mean, as federal taxes lower, there is less money for state grants and thus they have to raise the money to kep themselves afloat,don't they?

[AP]

20. States are making up shortfall by hiding taxes and BUILDING CASINOS

and running lotteries, which are basically taxes on poor people who don't understand math and cost society more than they give back.

[BiggJawn]

14. Oooh! Oooh! I KNOW!

WE (the under 50-kilobuck crowd)do!

That 65% figure is pure Limp-balls. He's been using that figure for years now.

And I'm single, and my kid is grown and out paying taxes of her own now. Do i begrudge that portion of my taxes that pay for schools and daycare? Like another poster here does? No, I don't.

I don't smoke in bed, either, but I don't mind paying for firefighters. I don't have a spouse to get in a fight with, but I don't mind paying for cops. I don't drive in Indianapolis but 3-4 times a year, but I don't mind paying for repairs on I-465.

I'd hate to live in a Libertarian Fee-for-Service "Utopia"...Too much of a cost to be able to smoke dope. Which I don't do, either....

[Zynx]

15. The rich do pay the highest amount of taxes and they should.

Half of Americans pay no federal income tax at all while a full 70% pay more in payroll tax than federal income tax.

[AP]

16. Most of the ways you look at it, rich have lower burden than poor.

For example, a study of the effective tax rates (considering ALL taxes, state local federal, on all sources of income, including property, income and sales) showed that the top QUINTILE (which is a big slice of America, including billionaires with lawyers making 100K) paid IIRC the second or third lowest effective rates, with the bottom two quintiles paying pretty highe effective rates. IIIRC, I believe it went something like this (from lowest to highest quintile): 15% 23% 17% 18% 16%. That's from memory.

Also, anyway you break down the top percentages of income earners' federal tax burdends, they pay a lower percentage than the wealth they earn. For example, if the to 1% earns 30% of all income in America, they pay 15% of all taxes. If the top 10% earns 60% of alll income, they pay 40% of all taxes. And if the bottom 50% earns 10% of all income, then they pay 65% of all income tax. Again, I don't remember the actual numbers, but the trend I do remember.

Another thing you have to appreciate with income tax is that it's a small part of the wealth that wealthy people control. For example, if you're a third generation Rockefeller living off a huge trust fund, the wealth you CONTROL is immense, even though your earned and unearned income is tiny, relative to people who are getting rich off of working for a living.

Another thing that is also important when thinking about taxes is the huge difference in taxes on earned and unearned income. The highest tax rate on cap gains and on dividends is 15%. The highest on earned income is more than twice as much -- and this is how the richest Americans are able to get their tax burden down to 15% (or lower -- e.g, Theresa Heinz's effective tax rate on all her income was something like 11% or 12%. She not cheating. She just doesn't work. She has no earned income. She lives off of dividends and stock sales. A lot of that is from municipal bonds which aren't taxed. Compare that to any other American who doesn't inherit wealth. Every other American has to work to amass at the very least their seed money.

[TahitiNut]

22. Yes, and people are trying REALLY HARD to stop being rich because

... of these toturous penalties. Life is so unfair to the involuntarily wealthy. Imagine the pain and agony of being born wealthy and having no choice about it, and then having to pay so much in income taxes on money gotten from the labors of others! The horror! The horror!

[TahitiNut]

24. An analysis I did of 1998 taxes (ALL taxes) shows ...

AGI Under $2,000 (avg taxable income $526) ..................... 42.1%
AGI $2,000 under $4,000 (avg taxable income $1,522) ............ 43.8%
AGI $4,000 under $6,000 (avg taxable income $1,163) ............ 43.5%
AGI $6,000 under $8,000 (avg taxable income $1,838) ............ 43.7%
AGI $8,000 under $10,000 (avg taxable income $2,419) ........... 43.4%
AGI $10,000 under $12,000 (avg taxable income $3,954) .......... 43.4%
AGI $12,000 under $14,000 (avg taxable income $4,775) .......... 43.4%
AGI $14,000 under $16,000 (avg taxable income $5,622) .......... 43.4%
AGI $16,000 under $18,000 (avg taxable income $7,012) .......... 43.4%
AGI $18,000 under $20,000 (avg taxable income $8,644) .......... 43.5%
AGI $20,000 under $25,000 (avg taxable income $11,388) ......... 43.5%
AGI $25,000 under $30,000 (avg taxable income $15,775) ......... 41.4%
AGI $30,000 under $40,000 (avg taxable income $21,689) ......... 41.7%
AGI $40,000 under $50,000 (avg taxable income $29,680) ......... 41.5%
AGI $50,000 under $75,000 (avg taxable income $42,581) ......... 41.3%
AGI $75,000 under $100,000 (avg taxable income $62,693) ........ 41.1%
AGI $100,000 under $200,000 (avg taxable income $101,555) ...... 40.6%
AGI $200,000 under $500,000 (avg taxable income $246,448) ...... 40.0%
AGI $500,000 under $1,000,000 (avg taxable income $603,613) .... 39.8%
AGI $1,000,000 or more (avg taxable income $2,814,687) ......... 37.3%

---

To perform this analysis, I assembled the IRS data and the data on State and Local taxes provided by CTJ (Citizens for Tax Justice) and the imputed OASDI/HI taxes in those income bands, based on the IRS figures showing the proportion of income attributable to W&S (Wages and Salaries) as opposed to unearned income (dividends and capital gains) and other income (unemployment, etc.).

It takes years for the IRS to publish the income tax analysis reports and years between the CTJ's analysis of S&L taxes, so it's difficult to get more recent data.


If there's any question about who's not paying taxes, just look at this ...

[TahitiNut]

25. Oh, and as an interesting note about 2000 Federal Income Taxes ...

There were 237 individual tax returns filed with an average AGI of $4,202,747 ... that paid no federal income tax.

Bizarre, huh?
That's about 0.1% of those returns showing an AGI greater than $1 million.