This little five-pager by Peter Ferrara for Americans for Tax Reform plopped out a couple weeks ago while I was out of town, but it still packs a punch. No doubt about it, people with money pay more in taxes than people without money. Duh. But Peter went through the exercise of demonstrating why that is true using actual IRS and CBO numbers.
IRS data shows “shows that the top 1% of income earners now pay 40% of federal income taxes, while earning 22% of income. The top 5% pay 60% of income taxes while earning 37% of income. The bottom 50% of income earners pay only 3% of federal income taxes.”
Right there it should be clear that if the top 1% have a tax burden almost double their income share they cannot be going untaxed. Only pure class warfare would drive one to argue that the current tax code is not progressive enough. It does a fantastic job of getting money out of people with money.
Think how effective it would be were it even simpler and flatter.