On May 11, 2011, at 1:52 PM, brad wrote:
> I don't understand why we would want to debunk the idea that most
> federal income tax is paid by the top. It is simply a sign that the
> middle class has disappeared and that the bulk of people now fall
> bellow the $33,000 cut off for which low income tax credits reduce
> their federal taxes to zero. If we regrow the middle class their
> portion will go up. You can't squeeze water out of a rock.
That's not really true. There have been major changes to tax rates over time.
Here are some numbers from the CBO, which I realize make for a less snappy
soundbite but have the virtue of being accurate.
The first panel of the table is the effective tax rate (what people actually
pay, not what's on the books) for the bottom, middle, and top quintiles and the
top 1% for all federal taxes; the second is for the income tax only. Note the
big shift from positive to negative rates at the bottom (mostly the EITC):
bottom 20% middle 20% top 20% top 1%
all
---
1979 8.0 18.6 27.5 37.0
1984 10.2 18.0 24.3 28.2
1994 6.6 17.3 27.4 35.8
2007 4.0 14.3 25.1 29.5
income
------
1979 0.0 7.5 15.7 21.6
1984 0.7 6.7 14.1 19.3
1994 -3.9 5.3 15.0 23.0
2007 -6.8 3.3 14.4 19.0
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
