The Wealthy minority pays the the majority of the total taxes collected.

[ChillbertKChesterton]

This is the #1 argument used by the right against higher taxes on the wealthy. Their claim is that the top 1% or the top 10% pays a far higher percentage of the total tax share than does the bottom majority.

Do not let this claim go unchallenged. It is the only argument they have for coddling the rich.

Of course the top 10% pay a higher percentage of the total tax revenue, because they have a disproportionately high share of the total income (and even higher proportion of the wealth).

Let's look at this with a simple example:


If you get 100 people, 1 of them with $999 and 99 of them with $1, the total revenue for everyone is $1098
If you tax the top 1% at a rate of 10%, you get $99.90, if you tax the bottom 99% at 50% (that is, tax HALF of their entire revenue), you get $49.5.

This is an incredibly skewed distribution with an incredibly regressive tax policy, but let's look at the analysis the same way you are pointing out:

The total tax revenue for the entire group is $149.40
of the total taxed revenue, the top 1% pays over 2/3 of all taxes, at 66.86%. This is with the top 1% paying a 10% tax rate.
of the total taxed revenue, the bottom 99% combined pays less than 1/3 of all taxes, at 33.13%. This is with the bottom 99% paying a 50% tax rate.


According to this analysis, that poor 1% is getting shafted because he pays a FAR higher portion of the taxes. This looks unfair, it looks EXTREMELY progressive, because 1% pays over 2/3 of all taxes while the bottom 99 combined pay only 1/3 of all taxes.

However, looking at the income levels and tax rates, it becomes clear that this is not the case. The top 1% gets 100 times the income that anyone else gets, and they pay only 1/5 of the tax rate that everyone else gets.

This is the problem with the "share of taxes" analysis.

[Jack Sprat]

1. Of course, but this provides the bullet lines

for Rush, Sarah, Sean, and Bill-O. Unreasoned and irrational bullet lines for those willing to get paid to shill for the fatcats.

[MisterP]

2. warmongers have learned to use the language of "dissidents" and "human rights"

in El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya
the plutocrats have learned to use the language of fairness
this is something we need to prepare for

[sunflowerseed]

3. Kick

[rgbecker]

4. Another way to look at this....

How much does the person have left after paying his tax?

[mistertrickster]

5. You're exactly right.

I've been screaming about this for years.

The total tax collected as a percentage from the rich is wholly irrelevant to whether the tax is fair or not.

It's a non-sequitor, a red-herring. It does not compute on any level.

Here's a simpler example: Let's say your income tax system is this--only people who make an annual income of one million dollars pay income taxes. Everyone else pays nothing.

Let's say their tax is one dollar.

So . . . now 100 percent of the income tax is paid by the super-ultra-rich, and everyone else pays zero.

Is a tax of one dollar a year unfair?

According to the Sean O'Limbaughs it is, because the rich pay 100 percent of all income taxes.

[mistertrickster]

6. The minority pay a majority of taxes because they have the majority of INCOME.

That's why it's called an INCOME tax.

If you have a lot of income, you pay a lot of income tax (especially if it's ordinary income and not capital gains, which is taxed at a much lower rate of 15 percent).

The only way that the bottom 4/5ths could pay a higher percentage of income tax is if they made more income relative to the top earners.

So . . . let's make the tax "fairer" by redistributing wealth to the bottom 99 percent?

Sounds good to me . . .

[socialist_n_TN]

7. How much of a percentage of taxes do they pay

in proportion to the amount of wealth that they OWN? That's the fairer question.

[bik0]

10. It's called an "income" tax, not an asset tax.

What they own has already been taxed.

[socialist_n_TN]

13. Nope. They got what they already "own"

with the help of society. If they own 90% of the wealth, they should pay 90% of the taxes.

[True Earthling]

19. And how would that work?

How can you devise a tax based on what you own?

[IndyPragmatist]

8. Thats not an accurate assessment, sorry.

First of all, you have a regressive tax code in your example. Why are the bottom people paying 50% while the top is only paying 10%? That is completely out of whack. Nowhere do the poor pay a 5x higher tax rate than the rich in the world...nowhere.

Why not just say the rich pay a .000000000000001% tax rate and prove your erroneous point further? It's just as valid as the example provided.

[ChillbertKChesterton]

14. My example was to show how using a "share of the taxes" analysis

does not at all represent how "progressive" a system of taxation is.

in my example, the system is extraordinarily regressive, and the numbers still come out looking progressive when you look at the "share of total taxes".

it blows that stupid analysis out of the water by showing that it does not represent what people think it represents.

[IndyPragmatist]

15. No, it really doesn't

If you are trying to discredit the OECD numbers that have been thrown around alot lately, there is really only one way to do it. It only looks at the top 10%. Most other nations have multiple tax brackets above that level, so the top 1% in those countries are paying more than they do here. That is your only argument against the numbers.

I'm not really sure why people are trying to discredit facts. That is a problem with out country right now; people think that their facts are better than the other facts. No, a fact is a fact.

[True Earthling]

9. Households making >$1 Million paid an avg of 29%, middle incomers paid %15

according to this...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44592106/ns/politics-white_house/

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. But that's less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.

[jmowreader]

11. Be careful with those numbers

They aren't looking at INCOME tax, they're looking at ALL federal taxes.

For instance, The Rich are paying 100 percent of the federal excise tax charged to non-commercial operators on jet fuel. While it may seem outrageous to have a tax that only The Rich pays, the flipside of it is The Non Rich don't buy jet fuel.

[gulliver]

12. The Republican argument is disingenuous at best.

We are in a funny world indeed when arguments like that aren't just laughed into oblivion on first use. It exists because it is sneaky and people are dumb. It should actually make people angry, because it deliberately insults the intelligence.

[Major Nikon]

16. One must first have intelligence before you can insult it

Hence the term, useful idiots.

[Major Nikon]

17. The wingnuts also won't even engage in debate over all other forms of taxation

FICA is federal income tax, yet the wingnuts conveniently exclude it from their brain dead reasoning. From the debate they also exclude state taxes, utility taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, and sales taxes, all of which are highly regressive.

In other words, they only want to talk about the only form of taxation that actually is progressive, which is the federal tax on wages (note I said wages and not income). They also want to narrowly frame the debate in terms of which income GROUPS pay what they think is a disparate AMOUNT of taxation.

[bluestate10]

18. Democrats should hammer that the issue is paying one's fair share.

Democrats must keep hammering that the ultra rich pay effective tax rates of 15%, if that, while the middle class pay 22%. The issue is tax rate fairness, not revenue dollars.