I've been lurking for a good while, but felt I just had to jump in on this one. Here are the the statistics released by the IRS:
"The Internal Revenue Service has released data on tax year 2003 that show the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent of the whole, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent. In 1980, when the top statutory income tax rate went up to 70 percent, the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers was just 19.3 percent. After Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1981, which reduced the top rate to 50 percent--a massive giveaway to the wealthy, according to critics on the Left--the percentage of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent rose steadily. By 1986 the top 1 percent of taxpayers' share of all federal income taxes had risen to 25.7 percent. That year the top statutory tax rate was further cut to 28 percent--another huge giveaway, we were told. Yet the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent continued to rise. By 1992, it was up to 27.5 percent." See the full article at http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=18402 The idea that the poor pay the lion's share of taxes is absurd. Aside from state and local sales taxes, which do tend to be regressive, the poor pay almost nothing. Lee Scott _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
