My thoughts about taxes for the rich.
Democrats say that the rich need to pay their fair share, but when I look at the income tax rates, I see that the more you earn, you pay not only the same percentage, but an increasing percentage. That's a progressive scale already. Do they want to make higher earners pay an even more disproportionate part of their fair share? That cannot be right because it would lack intellectual integrity. Is the problem capital gains taxes? I would like to see a curve that shows total taxes paid (in all forms) versus -total- income. Put income on the X axis and taxes paid (absolute) on the Y axis. My assumption is that it would show a line curving asymptotically upwards, or at least a straight line upwards. Am I wrong? I don't like to be wrong. Change my mind...I promise I'm amenable to reason.
2 Comments:
I don't have a curve, but how about a table? http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?DocID=3204
The median and mean effective rates for combined income and payroll tax have generally a progressive slope, though they are somehow higher for the $500k-$1m range than for the $1m+ range.
There are some weird quirks, though, including 10% of people making between 10-20K/year pay higher tax rates than 25% of people making $1m+.
I think the lesson is that you can find support for either position from the numbers - if you look at overall averages, then there's no reason to make the taxes more progressive. If you look at specific examples like Warren Buffet's secretary or the quirk above, there's lots of room for improvement.
I may not have exactly the numbers you're looking for. However some things are completely indisputable. We are becoming increasingly stratified between rich and poor.
http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201109130008
INCOME tax used to be much more progressive than they are now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Tax_rates_in_history
This blog links a study that also has some information you might find interesting.
http://ask.metafilter.com/186693/Total-tax-burden-by-income-level
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