GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT
(In response to the Oct. 13 letter to the editor)
Nick Keller thinks the rich are overtaxed because the top 1 percent pay more than a third of federal income taxes.
If income taxes were the only federal taxes, he might have a point.
If we include other federal taxes (e.g., payroll taxes) we find that the share of total federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent drops to 23.6 percent.
Since their share of pre-tax national income ranges from 20 to 24 percent (depending on which recent year and the estimating methods employed) that doesn’t sound too bad; it’s almost a flat tax, in fact.
If we look instead at the percentage of their income paid in taxes by the top 1 percent (i.e., effective tax rate) it comes to 27.4 percent, which is only mildly progressive taxation.
As for all those ordinary folks that supposedly "pay no taxes," we find that the middle 20 percent of the population (which we can use as a proxy for the middle-class) gets 11.5 percent of the country's pre-tax personal income; and they pay 13 percent of their income in total federal taxes (including payroll taxes).
So in fact, far from riding on the coattails of the rich, they pay a basically flat tax, in which their tax burden roughly equals their share of income (in fact, it’s a little more).
Emil Pulsifer
Reader
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