Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Who Pays Income Tax?
I was talking with two Obama supporters this morning about Romney's 47% statement. Both were shocked when they heard that half of the population pays no income tax. In the interest of spreading light, here are a few other interesting facts about America's income tax.
1. Is it a fair system if 90% of Americans pay less than 1/3 of the total income tax collected?
2. What kind of system do you think we might get if it is based on convincing the 50% of the people who don't pay income taxes to vote to raise taxes on, say, the top 5%, 10%, 25%, or 50% who do?
- The "One Percent" (top 1% of income earners) pay over 36% of the tax collected.
- The top five percent pay almost 60% of tax collected.
- The top ten percent pay over 70% of tax collected.
- The top 50% pay 97.75% of the tax.
1. Is it a fair system if 90% of Americans pay less than 1/3 of the total income tax collected?
2. What kind of system do you think we might get if it is based on convincing the 50% of the people who don't pay income taxes to vote to raise taxes on, say, the top 5%, 10%, 25%, or 50% who do?
