It's hard to figure out how they got that chart that I've now seen pasted about a dozen times around social media. They cite an unpublished book. But it looks c

It's hard to figure out how they got that chart that I've now seen pasted about a dozen times around social media. They cite an unpublished book. But it looks comically wrong. The bottom decile's tax rate is nowhere near 25%. The entire bottom quintile's tax rate is around 3%, and less than 2% for federal taxes. Perhaps the book plays some games with what constitute a "tax rate?" For example, if you spend double your income on consumption (not uncommon for low income people, especially those who benefit from programs like EITC and SNAP) and then pay sales tax, you could squint really hard and say that a 10% state sales tax is effectively a 20% income tax. But that's crazy; this number would keep going up the more wealth transfer happens.