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serious question - why do people believe the rich don't pay their fair share when the top 10% pay almost 3/4 of the income taxes. there's no way the top 10% rec

serious question - why do people believe the rich don't pay their fair share when the top 10% pay almost 3/4 of the income taxes. there's no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services, thus they're paying proportionally more, no? I am not saying this is good or bad, just trying to understand the rhetoric. it seems to me that rich people already pay plenty: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2025/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in... only referring to income taxes here. not anything else.

lenerdenator 2y ago
If you have multiple individuals sitting on top of $100+ billion, then they aren't paying plenty. Especially given the things that these individuals often do with their wealth.
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  I'm not talking about specific rich individuals (e.g. top 1000). I'm talking about rich people in general, e.g. top 10% furthermore I am only talking about income tax, which is why I gave my context link.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    Then you're lowballing, perhaps as a rhetorical device.
    - amazingamazing 2y ago
      lowballing in what sense?
      - myrmidon 2y ago
        When people are talking about "the rich not paying their fair share", it is typically about the income class that makes most of the income not from "working", but from "owning" (capital gains, profit from owned assets). This is exacerbated by the fact that those kinds of incomes are often taxed less (percentage-wise) than peoples salaries. The cutoff for this is probably more in the top 1 to 0.1% range. This notion is not something that only poor communists subscribe to (out of selfinterest/delusion), see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule
        amazingamazing 2y ago
        this doesn't really make any sense. forget billionaries - look at the bottom 50% compared to the cut off to be in the top 10%. The person in the top 10% making a mere 180K pays an order of magnitude more taxes. of course, this is how a progressive tax system works inevitably. thus, my point and question is, how are rich people not already paying their fair share? by all data available with respect to [income taxes], they already pay a ton, no?
        lostlogin 2y ago
        > forget billionaries That’s a key part of the argument though. Once someone reaches a certain level of wealth, should it get easier or harder to keep growing that wealth? I say this in terms of value to society. Is having some extremely, extremely rich individuals of value to the US?
        amazingamazing 2y ago
        > I say this in terms of value to society. Is having some extremely, extremely rich individuals of value to the US? yes. restated, is it good or bad that the USA has rich people? clearly it is good. if it were bad, then there would be evidence that countries with no rich people are better, but there is no such evidence.
        lenerdenator 2y ago
        > yes. restated, is it good or bad that the USA has rich people? clearly it is good. if it were bad, then there would be evidence that countries with no rich people are better, but there is no such evidence. That's not the question. Having rich people is one thing; having extremely, extremely rich people is another. We're talking about people that are worth the entire annual economic output of entire medium-sized metropolitan areas of the US and Canada, not the guy you knew from college who became director of sales at a software vendor and lives in a neighborhood with a golf course.
        alexanderchr 2y ago
tsupiroti 2y ago
> there's no way the top 10% receive 10% of the services. Depends on how you value the service of protecting that wealth. Prooperty rights enforced by the state, and the more property one has, the more one benefits from that.
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  but one is taxed based on their income, not their wealth, so that's not relevant at all.
  - rgbrgb 2y ago
    I think you misunderstand. The comment your responding to was arguing against this assertion: > no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services I think the argument is that the main service USA taxes pay for is defending property and keeping order (via force and infrastructure) such that property rights are honored. The rich have disproportionate property, so they receive disproportionate service.
    - amazingamazing 2y ago
      you keep bringing in property but that's irrelevant to begin with, as that's a wealth construct and I'm only talking about W2 income. if you make more money, you will pay more taxes regardless if whether or not you own any property, so your point is moot. all 50 states already levy property taxes on real estate so that's already accounted for separately
      - rgbrgb 2y ago
        Property is not just real estate and state property tax is not what is keeping the american billionaire class safe and growing richer. If you've asked this question in good faith, perhaps isolating and over-defining "income" or "property" is limiting your understanding of the broader question we're responding to: do rich people pay more or less tax compared to the value they get from government? Most here seem to be in agreement that rich get more value from our government than poor do because they have more at stake.
wood_spirit 2y ago
Top 10% richest people own 85% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth The richest people are not paying the “income tax” your link refers to. They often have trusts and things and do daily expenses from loans and other tricks. Bezos and Musk, for example, paid $0 income tax https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ProPublica-Billionaires-Fact-Sheet-Updated.pdf https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ProPu...
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  This link is only referring to income taxed, and I am only talking about income taxed. Your wealth comments are irrelevant to my point and to the data presented.
jp_nc 2y ago
The top 10% income bracket is a household income of 234k. For a couple both making $150k each in salary, they are top 10% and paying out probably 40% of that in taxes. Elons stock probably added $200B to his net worth in the past year. He did not pay anything on it, however is able to use it as collateral to borrow against (that way he doesn’t even have to pay capital gains). The upper middle class pays most of the tax burden. And your point about services???? Elon may not take advantage of the head start program for his kids, but he sure benefited from government subsidies for electric cars (just like CEOs benefit from favorable legislation and regulation)
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  I don't see what elon's stock has to do with anything. rich people's net worth fluctuates a lot. furthermore I am talking only about income tax. do you disagree with my point, when talking only about income tax?
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  > however is able to use it as collateral to borrow against (that way he doesn’t even have to pay capital gains) I really don't understand how borrowing against shares isn't counted as realizing the stocks. I mean, apart from rich people lobbying against it and such. If I buy some stocks for $100 and sit on them until they're worth $1000, if I sell them for $1000 or take a $1000 loan against them, I've realized the $900 gain and I should pay taxes on that either way.
  - thunky 2y ago
    > I should pay taxes on that either way If the stock value drops below $1000 (or to $0), would you get your tax $ back?
    - magicalhippo 2y ago
      Why would you? Your choice to realize. If you're worried about that just sell them instead of taking a loan.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
The top 10% also have somewhere around 70% of the wealth, so the tax burden isn't quite as disproportionate as it seems. Feel free to compare income numbers if you're able to find them. That said, why should we expect a direct relationship between increased tax burden and services received? You're not paying for services like a vendor, you're paying "society" in a sense.
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  again, I am only talking about income taxes, which can be appraised and assessed easily. taxing wealth introduces complications beyond the scope of discussion.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    > taxing wealth introduces complications beyond the scope of discussion. That’s a key part of this discussion and argument. So once someone has the money, let’s just ignore it.
    - amazingamazing 2y ago
      there is no objective way to calculate and appraise all wealth, so such discussions are meaningless inherently, the touching of said assets would immediately change its value, which would require recalculation, which would change the value again, etc. the only true way to do it is to tax upon realization, which is already what happens.
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        This is a bizarre argument. You can can throw your hands up and say it’s too hard or actually do something. Property tax, property sales tax, taxing capital gains, etc. None of this is new or novel.
lesuorac 2y ago
> there's no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services Why not? A highway between Illinois and Ohio doesn't help me. It does help say the CEO of Walmart. When you're invested into large parts of the USA, anything the government does helps your bottom line. When you're not then majority of the services the US does doesn't help you.
Smeevy 2y ago
This is from a Libertarian think tank. Do you think there's a reason they limited their breakdown to top 1% instead of listing the contributions from the top 0.1%? I sure do.
nirvdrum 2y ago
I'm not sure "top 10%" is all that useful of a grouping. In the table you present, $178,611 is the income split point, defined as "the minimum AGI for tax returns to fall into each percentile". $178k does not make you rich in almost any part of the US. You're not struggling if you live in a low cost of living area, but treating these folks the same as your Pichai, Ellison, Bezos, Cook, etc. is severely misleading to me. I think that's a core problem with our current tax bracketing -- seven just isn't enough for the absolutely massive income spread of American workers.
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  > but treating these folks the same as your Pichai, Ellison, Bezos, Cook, etc I never mentioned these people.
  - estebank 2y ago
    Bucketing someone who makes $200k with someone who makes $200M instead of with someone who makes $20k sure is a choice.
    - amazingamazing 2y ago
      what exactly is your point, are you suggesting the data is wrong? if the link had a 0.1% bracket it would show that the even smaller group pays an even higher percentage of the total income tax revenue relative to their size.
      - bilbo0s 2y ago
        I think they are saying the data is misleading in the extreme. And it is. It's clear the middle class earners are shouldering the burden here. I hope you're just confused about what everyone is saying, and not being intentionally disingenuous.
      - estebank 2y ago
        I'm suggesting that the dichotomy is "earns wages from labor" vs "earns income from assets". The difference of someone on the 2nd decile vs someone on the 1st decile is that the former looks at the price on the supermarket while the later doesn't need to. But the difference between someone on the top 1 percentile and the top 0.1 percentile is much starker. > if the link had a 0.1% bracket it would show that the even smaller group pays an even higher percentage of the total income tax revenue relative to their size. That's exactly the point: in absolute values, if you have a lot of concentration of wealth, those will come out to be most of the tax base. That doesn't mean that proportionally they are paying the same. As a matter of fact, someone that makes 100k being taxed 20% is actually more onerous than someone that makes 1M being taxed 20%. This is why most countries try to have a progressive tax system.
lostlogin 2y ago
> there's no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services How do you measure that? The state protecting me and my assets is of value to me. However the state protecting Musk and Musks assets is rather more important to him. Who do you think should be paying more? The poor?
erikerikson 2y ago
As you move up the ladder, more of your income is increasingly derivative of society as facilitated by the state and its spending. For example, businesses are dependent on sufficiently educated employees to run them and need a sufficiently affluent population to buy their products. Usually products are delivered via roads, the Internet, or other public infrastructure. Most businesses use electricity from a public grid even if they have a private company that they pay their bill to. Because of this, rich people may receive more than 3/4 of the benefit of the services provided by taxes.
bilbo0s 2y ago
when the top 10% pay almost 3/4 of the income taxes. Because the top 10% are not rich. Only the top ~0.5% are rich. The reality is that the vast majority of that 3/4 of taxes is paid by the middle class. Put another way, the top 10% is mostly 6 figure salaries, not 7 figure salaries, and certainly not 8 or 9 figure salaries.
yoyohello13 2y ago
When people say things like "rich don't pay their fair" they aren't talking about the 10%. They are talking about the top 0.1% I think the real distinction is people who work for a living, and people who own for a living.
dialup_sounds 2y ago
When people say "the rich" they're usually referring to smaller percentiles than the top 10%. The top 10% is a cohort the size of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
marcusverus 2y ago
They'll play word games, they'll equivocate, but they'll rarely engage in good faith. Spend your time wisely friend :)

lenerdenator 2y ago

If you have multiple individuals sitting on top of $100+ billion, then they aren't paying plenty. Especially given the things that these individuals often do with their wealth.

amazingamazing 2y ago
I'm not talking about specific rich individuals (e.g. top 1000). I'm talking about rich people in general, e.g. top 10% furthermore I am only talking about income tax, which is why I gave my context link.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  Then you're lowballing, perhaps as a rhetorical device.
  - amazingamazing 2y ago
    lowballing in what sense?
    - myrmidon 2y ago
      When people are talking about "the rich not paying their fair share", it is typically about the income class that makes most of the income not from "working", but from "owning" (capital gains, profit from owned assets). This is exacerbated by the fact that those kinds of incomes are often taxed less (percentage-wise) than peoples salaries. The cutoff for this is probably more in the top 1 to 0.1% range. This notion is not something that only poor communists subscribe to (out of selfinterest/delusion), see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule
      - amazingamazing 2y ago
        this doesn't really make any sense. forget billionaries - look at the bottom 50% compared to the cut off to be in the top 10%. The person in the top 10% making a mere 180K pays an order of magnitude more taxes. of course, this is how a progressive tax system works inevitably. thus, my point and question is, how are rich people not already paying their fair share? by all data available with respect to [income taxes], they already pay a ton, no?
        lostlogin 2y ago
        > forget billionaries That’s a key part of the argument though. Once someone reaches a certain level of wealth, should it get easier or harder to keep growing that wealth? I say this in terms of value to society. Is having some extremely, extremely rich individuals of value to the US?
        amazingamazing 2y ago
        > I say this in terms of value to society. Is having some extremely, extremely rich individuals of value to the US? yes. restated, is it good or bad that the USA has rich people? clearly it is good. if it were bad, then there would be evidence that countries with no rich people are better, but there is no such evidence.
        lenerdenator 2y ago
        > yes. restated, is it good or bad that the USA has rich people? clearly it is good. if it were bad, then there would be evidence that countries with no rich people are better, but there is no such evidence. That's not the question. Having rich people is one thing; having extremely, extremely rich people is another. We're talking about people that are worth the entire annual economic output of entire medium-sized metropolitan areas of the US and Canada, not the guy you knew from college who became director of sales at a software vendor and lives in a neighborhood with a golf course.
        alexanderchr 2y ago

tsupiroti 2y ago

> there's no way the top 10% receive 10% of the services. Depends on how you value the service of protecting that wealth. Prooperty rights enforced by the state, and the more property one has, the more one benefits from that.

amazingamazing 2y ago
but one is taxed based on their income, not their wealth, so that's not relevant at all.
- rgbrgb 2y ago
  I think you misunderstand. The comment your responding to was arguing against this assertion: > no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services I think the argument is that the main service USA taxes pay for is defending property and keeping order (via force and infrastructure) such that property rights are honored. The rich have disproportionate property, so they receive disproportionate service.
  - amazingamazing 2y ago
    you keep bringing in property but that's irrelevant to begin with, as that's a wealth construct and I'm only talking about W2 income. if you make more money, you will pay more taxes regardless if whether or not you own any property, so your point is moot. all 50 states already levy property taxes on real estate so that's already accounted for separately
    - rgbrgb 2y ago
      Property is not just real estate and state property tax is not what is keeping the american billionaire class safe and growing richer. If you've asked this question in good faith, perhaps isolating and over-defining "income" or "property" is limiting your understanding of the broader question we're responding to: do rich people pay more or less tax compared to the value they get from government? Most here seem to be in agreement that rich get more value from our government than poor do because they have more at stake.

wood_spirit 2y ago

Top 10% richest people own 85% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth The richest people are not paying the “income tax” your link refers to. They often have trusts and things and do daily expenses from loans and other tricks. Bezos and Musk, for example, paid $0 income tax https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ProPublica-Billionaires-Fact-Sheet-Updated.pdf https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ProPu...

amazingamazing 2y ago
This link is only referring to income taxed, and I am only talking about income taxed. Your wealth comments are irrelevant to my point and to the data presented.

jp_nc 2y ago

The top 10% income bracket is a household income of 234k. For a couple both making $150k each in salary, they are top 10% and paying out probably 40% of that in taxes. Elons stock probably added $200B to his net worth in the past year. He did not pay anything on it, however is able to use it as collateral to borrow against (that way he doesn’t even have to pay capital gains). The upper middle class pays most of the tax burden. And your point about services???? Elon may not take advantage of the head start program for his kids, but he sure benefited from government subsidies for electric cars (just like CEOs benefit from favorable legislation and regulation)

amazingamazing 2y ago
I don't see what elon's stock has to do with anything. rich people's net worth fluctuates a lot. furthermore I am talking only about income tax. do you disagree with my point, when talking only about income tax?
magicalhippo 2y ago
> however is able to use it as collateral to borrow against (that way he doesn’t even have to pay capital gains) I really don't understand how borrowing against shares isn't counted as realizing the stocks. I mean, apart from rich people lobbying against it and such. If I buy some stocks for $100 and sit on them until they're worth $1000, if I sell them for $1000 or take a $1000 loan against them, I've realized the $900 gain and I should pay taxes on that either way.
- thunky 2y ago
  > I should pay taxes on that either way If the stock value drops below $1000 (or to $0), would you get your tax $ back?
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Why would you? Your choice to realize. If you're worried about that just sell them instead of taking a loan.

AlotOfReading 2y ago

The top 10% also have somewhere around 70% of the wealth, so the tax burden isn't quite as disproportionate as it seems. Feel free to compare income numbers if you're able to find them. That said, why should we expect a direct relationship between increased tax burden and services received? You're not paying for services like a vendor, you're paying "society" in a sense.

amazingamazing 2y ago
again, I am only talking about income taxes, which can be appraised and assessed easily. taxing wealth introduces complications beyond the scope of discussion.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > taxing wealth introduces complications beyond the scope of discussion. That’s a key part of this discussion and argument. So once someone has the money, let’s just ignore it.
  - amazingamazing 2y ago
    there is no objective way to calculate and appraise all wealth, so such discussions are meaningless inherently, the touching of said assets would immediately change its value, which would require recalculation, which would change the value again, etc. the only true way to do it is to tax upon realization, which is already what happens.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      This is a bizarre argument. You can can throw your hands up and say it’s too hard or actually do something. Property tax, property sales tax, taxing capital gains, etc. None of this is new or novel.

lesuorac 2y ago

> there's no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services Why not? A highway between Illinois and Ohio doesn't help me. It does help say the CEO of Walmart. When you're invested into large parts of the USA, anything the government does helps your bottom line. When you're not then majority of the services the US does doesn't help you.

Smeevy 2y ago

This is from a Libertarian think tank. Do you think there's a reason they limited their breakdown to top 1% instead of listing the contributions from the top 0.1%? I sure do.

nirvdrum 2y ago

I'm not sure "top 10%" is all that useful of a grouping. In the table you present, $178,611 is the income split point, defined as "the minimum AGI for tax returns to fall into each percentile". $178k does not make you rich in almost any part of the US. You're not struggling if you live in a low cost of living area, but treating these folks the same as your Pichai, Ellison, Bezos, Cook, etc. is severely misleading to me. I think that's a core problem with our current tax bracketing -- seven just isn't enough for the absolutely massive income spread of American workers.

amazingamazing 2y ago
> but treating these folks the same as your Pichai, Ellison, Bezos, Cook, etc I never mentioned these people.
- estebank 2y ago
  Bucketing someone who makes $200k with someone who makes $200M instead of with someone who makes $20k sure is a choice.
  - amazingamazing 2y ago
    what exactly is your point, are you suggesting the data is wrong? if the link had a 0.1% bracket it would show that the even smaller group pays an even higher percentage of the total income tax revenue relative to their size.
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      I think they are saying the data is misleading in the extreme. And it is. It's clear the middle class earners are shouldering the burden here. I hope you're just confused about what everyone is saying, and not being intentionally disingenuous.
    - estebank 2y ago
      I'm suggesting that the dichotomy is "earns wages from labor" vs "earns income from assets". The difference of someone on the 2nd decile vs someone on the 1st decile is that the former looks at the price on the supermarket while the later doesn't need to. But the difference between someone on the top 1 percentile and the top 0.1 percentile is much starker. > if the link had a 0.1% bracket it would show that the even smaller group pays an even higher percentage of the total income tax revenue relative to their size. That's exactly the point: in absolute values, if you have a lot of concentration of wealth, those will come out to be most of the tax base. That doesn't mean that proportionally they are paying the same. As a matter of fact, someone that makes 100k being taxed 20% is actually more onerous than someone that makes 1M being taxed 20%. This is why most countries try to have a progressive tax system.

lostlogin 2y ago

> there's no way the top 10% receive 3/4 of the services How do you measure that? The state protecting me and my assets is of value to me. However the state protecting Musk and Musks assets is rather more important to him. Who do you think should be paying more? The poor?

erikerikson 2y ago

As you move up the ladder, more of your income is increasingly derivative of society as facilitated by the state and its spending. For example, businesses are dependent on sufficiently educated employees to run them and need a sufficiently affluent population to buy their products. Usually products are delivered via roads, the Internet, or other public infrastructure. Most businesses use electricity from a public grid even if they have a private company that they pay their bill to. Because of this, rich people may receive more than 3/4 of the benefit of the services provided by taxes.

bilbo0s 2y ago

when the top 10% pay almost 3/4 of the income taxes. Because the top 10% are not rich. Only the top ~0.5% are rich. The reality is that the vast majority of that 3/4 of taxes is paid by the middle class. Put another way, the top 10% is mostly 6 figure salaries, not 7 figure salaries, and certainly not 8 or 9 figure salaries.

yoyohello13 2y ago

When people say things like "rich don't pay their fair" they aren't talking about the 10%. They are talking about the top 0.1% I think the real distinction is people who work for a living, and people who own for a living.

dialup_sounds 2y ago

When people say "the rich" they're usually referring to smaller percentiles than the top 10%. The top 10% is a cohort the size of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

marcusverus 2y ago

They'll play word games, they'll equivocate, but they'll rarely engage in good faith. Spend your time wisely friend :)