2 ms·

I thought that "progressive" and "regressive" refer to what percentage tax you pay given what bracket (in dollars, not in percentile) you are. I would have thou

I thought that "progressive" and "regressive" refer to what percentage tax you pay given what bracket (in dollars, not in percentile) you are. I would have thought that the 45% mentioned in the article is proof of how many Americans are poor, not that the tax plan is progressive. Even with a moderately regressive income tax the rich will be paying more total tax even though they are paying a smaller percentage of their income as tax. Therefore you can not make any conclusions about the fairness of a tax by saying that the top 20% of earners pay 80% of the total amount of income tax (it would have been absolutely crazy if this was not the case, unless everybody had the same income). As such, I do not see how this article can be used to say anything about whether the tax is progressive or regressive (and as you mentioned, whether it is fair altogether).

camiller 9y ago
They are not well defined terms and are meant more to evoke an emotional response. Progressive does mean that you pay at an increasing rate the higher your income is. A flat percentage tax (example everyone pays 18% no loopholes) should be neither progressive or regressive but most US liberals would still call it regressive because it would be if you consider the current rates as a baseline. A truly regressive plan would actually decrease rates as you went higher in income. Neither Federal or any state that has income taxes has a truly regressive tax schedule. Edit: I suppose if you figure in sales taxes into overall tax burden you could call some states regressive. But that is not a feature of their income tax rates.
ameister14 9y ago
Yes, and the top earners pay 396% more of their income than the bottom as far as federal income tax is concerned - this is traditionally understood to mean it's highly progressive as a system.

camiller 9y ago

They are not well defined terms and are meant more to evoke an emotional response. Progressive does mean that you pay at an increasing rate the higher your income is. A flat percentage tax (example everyone pays 18% no loopholes) should be neither progressive or regressive but most US liberals would still call it regressive because it would be if you consider the current rates as a baseline. A truly regressive plan would actually decrease rates as you went higher in income. Neither Federal or any state that has income taxes has a truly regressive tax schedule. Edit: I suppose if you figure in sales taxes into overall tax burden you could call some states regressive. But that is not a feature of their income tax rates.

ameister14 9y ago

Yes, and the top earners pay 396% more of their income than the bottom as far as federal income tax is concerned - this is traditionally understood to mean it's highly progressive as a system.