Bush's unfair tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, or so they say, has actually increased the tax burden on the highest income earners. The latest reports show that not only have the total tax revenues collected by the federal government gone up, but so has the percentage of taxes paid by the top wage earners in the country. The next time you hear Obama talk about his tax plan of rolling back Bush's tax cuts on the "rich" and lowering taxes for everyone else, perhaps people will start to ask him some pointed questions rather than fainting.
As usual, this comes from one of my favorite publications, the WSJ. The data was in an editorial - but if you doubt the data, feel free to go to the original source.
Quote:
Washington is teeing up "the rich" for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them "pay their fair share." Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it's going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history.
[Their Fair Share]
The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.
Aha, we are told: The rich paid more taxes because they made a greater share of the money. That is true. The top 1% earned 22% of all reported income. But they also paid a share of taxes not far from double their share of income. In other words, the tax code is already steeply progressive.
We also know from income mobility data that a very large percentage in the top 1% are "new rich," not inheritors of fortunes. There is rapid turnover in the ranks of the highest income earners, so much so that people who started in the top 1% of income in the 1980s and 1990s suffered the largest declines in earnings of any income group over the subsequent decade, according to Treasury Department studies of actual tax returns. It's hard to stay king of the hill in America for long.
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Their Fair Share - WSJ.com
Also, keep in mind the point in the last paragraph I included. "New wealth" is income based, people going from nothing to being "rich" have high incomes and pay high taxes. These are the people really carrying the burden. "Old wealth" is asset based, people (I.e. - Kennedy's) can manipulate their capital to minimize their tax burden and can basically pay what they want, like Warren Buffet. In effect, Obama and Democrats have tax policies that protect "old wealth" and make it more difficult for people starting with nothing to accumulate wealth. Perhaps this in part explains why existing rich people and people with no interest in accumulating wealth are generally Democrats.
Given the latest data when are we going to start to see a shift in the empty rhetoric from Democrats on this important issue?