Who Pays Federal Income Taxes?
Bruce Bartlett is really taking the NY Times to task in this editorial but the facts he presents are astounding:
. . . the top one percent of taxpayers paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes in 2003, although they earned just 16.8 percent of the adjusted gross income. The top five percent of taxpayers paid more than half of all federal income taxes, the top 10 percent paid two-thirds, and the top half of taxpayers paid 96.5 percent, meaning that the bottom half paid just 3.5 percent.
Kind of puts the kabosh on the class war rhetoric that the rich don’t pay “their fair share”. The top 5 percent pay more than half of all federal income taxes. If that isn’t “their fair share” then what is?
October 11th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Bravo! you guys have done it again fine work. I also plan to link to this on my blog Island Thoughts.
I will attempt to put the IRS information in graph form
Thank you for point this fact out.