CBO: By the way, the rich already pay more than a fair share in taxes

CBO: By the way, the rich already pay more than a fair share in taxes
posted at 5:21 pm on July 10, 2012 by Erika Johnsen

“There’s nothing wrong with asking the wealthy to pay a little more in taxes.” -BHO
I feel like I’m constantly beating readers over the head with the simple logic that, due to America’s national percentage-based and graduated income tax, the country’s wealthy already pay “a little more” than most people do in taxes — why must President Obama insist on making me do that to you? It really would be much more productive if the President would just come out and say, why yes, I would like to take an even larger chunk out of the wealthy’s success in order to expand entitlement spending and effectively redistribute wealth. Instead, he’s constantly implying that the wealthy somehow don’t provide for the lion’s share of taxes, which we all know is patently and painfully false — but here are just the latest set of numbers corroborating the fact.

According to the CBO’s latest analysis released Tuesday, wealthy Americans earn approximately 50 percent of all income, but pay around 70 percent of the federal tax burden.

CBO looked at 2007 through 2009 — the latest years data are available, but enough to include the early effects of the last recession — and found the bottom 20 percent of American earners paid just three-tenths of a percent of the total federal tax burden, while the richest 20 percent paid 67.9 percent of taxes. …

The big losers over the past few years were the rest of the well-off — those in the 60th percent to 99th percent of earnings — who saw their tax burdens go up.

“Specifically, between 2007 and 2009, the share of taxes paid fell for the bottom three income quintiles, was close to flat for the fourth quintile, but rose for the highest quintile,” CBO said. “Within the top quintile, however, the shift was uneven; the share paid by the top percentile fell, and the share paid by the rest of the top quintile rose.”

In terms of actual earnings, the top 1 percent suffered the most in the recession, with their average earnings dropping from $1.9 million to $1.2 million. The lowest 20 percent saw their incomes drop from $23,900 to $23,500 during that time. …

… On average, the lowest 40 percent of earners actually get money back through the income tax code because of refundable tax credits.

Again, if President Obama would simply come clean with his true political motives rather than trying to spin the situation as if the tax code is somehow unfairly geared toward taking advantage of the middle class and letting the wealthy off scot-free, we could all be spared a great deal of soul-grating aggravation.
Take us out, WSJ:

So the 2013 tax cliff is a big enough economic problem that President Obama now wants to postpone it for some taxpayers. But it isn’t so big that he’s willing to curb his desire to raise taxes on tens of thousands of job-creating businesses. …

By Mr. Obama’s economic logic, tax increases matter on middle-income earners but are irrelevant to everyone else. “By the way, these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth,” as he put it Monday.

But Mr. Obama is demanding tax increases, not tax cuts, and large increases at that. If the Bush tax rates expire as scheduled on December 31, rates on the top two income brackets will jump to 39.6% from 35%, and 36% from 33%. …

The President dismissed all of this as merely affecting 3% of small business owners. But that includes tens of thousands of the most productive, fastest-growing small businesses—those most likely to hire workers amid a national jobless rate of 8.2%.
________________________________

To read another article by Erika Johnsen, click here.