Thursday, August 13, 2009

Who Pays Taxes

Charles Murray, writing in The Wall Street Journal, cites some very interesting statistics. Lets look at a few of his gleanings from IRS data:

Let's start with the rich, whom I define as families in the top 1% of income among those who filed tax returns. In 2007, the year with the most recent tax data, they had family incomes of $410,000 or more. They paid 40% of all the personal income taxes collected.

The families in the rest of the top 5% had family incomes of $160,000 to $410,000. They paid another 20% of total personal income taxes. Now we're up to three out of every five dollars in personal taxes paid by just five out of every 100 American families.

Murray continues:
Turn to the bottom three-quarters of the families who filed income tax returns in 2007—not just low-income families, but everybody with family incomes below $66,500. That 75% of families paid just 13% of all personal income taxes.
Sounds to me like we are already socking it to the rich, what do you think?