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Near 50% of American pay zero federal tax. The top 10% of all Americans pay 69% of all federal taxes currently. This is a point 'left out' of current discussion

• mayneack 6y ago
  using "percent of taxes" is an arbitrary metric. Why not ask about percent of wealth? I assume because "taxfoundation.org" is in the business of lowering taxes, which is only one of many things to be optimized in the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2... Eyeballing this chart suggests that the top 10% have more than 69% of the wealth, so paying 69% of the taxes seems like a good deal for them.
• vkou 6y ago
  Nearly 50% of Americans are children, students, and retirees.
  • czbond 6y ago
    I should have been more literal - 50% of federal taxpayers.
    • vkou 6y ago
      The median household income in the US is $68,000, I'm pretty sure that household pays federal taxes. Should we move the goalposts again?
      • brewdad 6y ago
        At that income level, a married couple with two children and childcare expenses could easily end up with zero tax bill and maybe even paying negative income tax. Standard deductions, child tax credit and childcare expense credits get you there without any exceptional circumstances.
        • vkou 6y ago
          The average number of people per household is 2.6. The two adult two child family is not a median american family. It's a much-larger than normal family. Of course if you apply their deductions to an average income, you get a very low tax rate. It's not typical.
• Jtsummers 6y ago
  > Near 50% of American pay zero federal tax. The top 10% of all Americans pay 69% of all federal taxes currently. This is a point 'left out' of current discussions. Nearly 50% pay no federal income tax. It's worth making that statement precise in this case, because saying they pay no federal tax is just a lie.
  • czbond 6y ago
    Federal income tax is what matters. So yes, everyone pays some sales tax, some property tax, FICA, etc. But what matters is income tax (for individuals).
    • Jtsummers 6y ago
      It is not the only one that matters, though it does make up (looked up, link at bottom) about 50% of federal tax revenue. Payroll taxes make up another 36%. Everyone who works and is paid aboveboard pays federal payroll taxes. It's only those whose AGI falls below whatever the present threshold is, or who are not paid aboveboard, who don't pay federal income taxes. If wages were keeping up better with inflation, we'd probably see a lot more people paying federal income taxes. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sourc...
      • czbond 6y ago
        I don't disagree. I was slyly trying to suggest we already have a wealth tax, called 'federal income tax'.
    • dcre 6y ago
      Why?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
• tw04 6y ago
  I like how you lump it up to top 10%. The top 1% of Americans pay 37% of the tax burden yet own over 60% of the wealth. They are grossly underpaying. Cutting entitlements and putting MORE of a financial burden on people who have nothing isn't going to fix the problem. AT BEST it'll result in massive social unrest and the end of the American Experiment. "I know you can't afford healthcare, and can barely afford food, but we're going to need to take away your food stamps, and your subsidized housing because Larry Ellison just can't afford another 1% increase in taxes". That's what you're going with?
  • czbond 6y ago
    A person is a person, fair and square to be treated equal - until we can extract more from ones pocketbook.
    • mullingitover 6y ago
      I would look at it as the surcharge on protecting a person's wealth. A person with no wealth doesn't need to have their wealth protected. A person with a great deal of wealth enjoys the benefits of taxation, having their wealth protected from the starving mobs outside their estate.
    • unethical_ban 6y ago
      A person is treated equally. If a person is poor, they get taxed little. If that same person becomes rich, they get taxed more. Money isn't a protected class. Why do you act like it is?
  • kortilla 6y ago
    > The top 1% of Americans pay 37% of the tax burden yet own over 60% of the wealth. Your statement confuses wealth with income.
• patagurbon 6y ago
  That's not surprising, nor necessarily a problem. The top 20% of earners make ~50% of the income in the US. And those people will have more margin to make up for that bottom 10% that makes 1% of the income. Per wikipedia
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  The top 10% of wage earners pay all the tax. But they're not the top 10% by wealth or unearned income. Those guys are getting off free. Reducing income tax by properly taxing inheritance, cap gains or wealth itself would help people who work for a living instead of sitting on their arses and jealousy guarding what their grandfather's grandfather's grandfather brought over from the old country.
  • czbond 6y ago
    The amazing thing is we can ALL buy assets and be the "grandfather's grandfather's grandfather". It isn't hard. Even very small wealth compounds incredibly after 150 years.
    • throwaway2245 6y ago
      > we can ALL buy assets and be the "grandfather's grandfather's grandfather". How many families/people are wealthy on the basis of the earnings of a regular person in 1870 and their incredibly compounded wealth? The answer is likely none.
      • czbond 6y ago
        This is due to human nature, not what logical, future thinking beings should do. I'm suggesting, that everyone can feel empowered, because assets or dollars invested today can be worth considerably more after inflation in the future. This should give EVERYONE hope.
      • ls612 6y ago
        Not 1870, but my great grandfather came to the US in 1905 or so with little more than the shirt on his back and worked a series of ‘regular person’ jobs until he died. The money he saved allowed several of his sons to start a small business, which did fine for several decades but went under around 2000. However that modest income split between the three brothers (one of whom was my grandfather) allowed them to save enough money to each become homeowners in the 50s and live a reasonable lifestyle in the suburbs. My grandpas frugality meant that even after he died young my dad could go to college without debt, and my dad has been somewhat frugal his whole life. So by 2020, based on the savings from a series of people working ‘regular person’ jobs, most of my great grandpas descendants who are in my dad’s generation are very well off, several are millionaires (I’m excluding my dad because he was the smart one in the family and went to medical school, his job pays far more than a ‘regular person’ job). And this story is not at all uncommon across the US. The reason you don’t hear it is because there’s a big (especially in the Midwest) cultural aversion to discussing wealth or showing it off.
• robrenaud 6y ago
  Also, Buffets effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's tax rate. The gap between the rich and poor is growing, and has been doing so since 1980. r > g is the biggest long term problem facing capitalist democracies.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >Also, Buffets effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's tax rate. That should be a lesson in how much of our taxation system is regressive not a lesson on how little Buffet is taxed. Buffet and his secretary both pay a couple hundred dollars of tax to register their used cars or a couple dollars of tax on a pack of smokes or a couple tens of dollars fee for some government service or a buck here and there for toll roads and those things are a much larger fraction of the secretary's income. The less you make the more these "fixed fee" taxes screw you.
• mullingitover 6y ago
  > Near 50% of American pay zero federal tax. I was looking for the lucky duckies argument to rear its head. The Intercept has an article which does a great job of eviscerating it[1] > ...when you take all U.S. taxes into account — federal income taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal corporate taxes, the federal estate tax, federal excise taxes, and the plethora of state and local taxes — the U.S. tax system is just mildly progressive. > If the U.S. tax system were perfectly flat, the share of taxes paid by each group of Americans above would be equal to their share of income. > Instead, the top 1 percent — with an average income of about $2 million — made 20.9 percent of America’s income, but paid 24.1 percent of America’s taxes. Few people will perceive this as a monstrous injustice. > Meanwhile, the middle 20 percent of Americans— with incomes between $41,000 and $66,000 per year — make 10.9 percent of America’s income and pay 9.4 percent of America’s taxes. The bottom 20 percent, making less than $23,000, make just 2.8 percent of America’s income and pay 2 percent of America’s taxes. That is, the “lucky duckies” of the right’s imagination who pay little to nothing in income taxes are still paying a significant portion of their income in taxes overall. [1] https://theintercept.com/2019/04/13/tax-day-taxes-statistics/ https://theintercept.com/2019/04/13/tax-day-taxes-statistics...
  • czbond 6y ago
    I was referencing only federal income, which I clarified a bit. Thank you for doing the work of providing those break downs.
  • ls612 6y ago
    Problem there is that it ignores transfer payments. So the people making 2.8% of the national income are really taking home more than that since they (collectively, not every individual receives all of these) are receiving snap, section 8, tanf, social security/SSI, Medicaid, etc. From a post transfer perspective, America’s tax system is firmly progressive, but less so than European countries. The other side of that is that in America you have the opportunity to do quite well for yourself if you aren’t in one of the aristocratic elite families. That isn’t really the case in many of these European social democracies. Not only is there a safety net below you, but there is also a net above you as well.
• colinmhayes 6y ago
  The top 10% of Americans have much more than 69% of the disposable income. The majority of Americans aren't able to afford a surprise $250 expense.
• necrotic_comp 6y ago
  ? What does this even mean ? The poor, by necessity, have to use government services more because they don't have resources ; are you suggesting that the poor pay more taxes to "scale things out" ?
• disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  What proportion of overall income do these people earn?