This is the Washington Examiner. They exist to be a conservative mouthpiece. Not a single thing they write is unbiased or even has any pretensions to be.
> Households in the highest income quintile received a little more than half of total before-tax income and paid more than two-thirds of all federal taxes in 2013 (see Figure 1). Households in other income groups received considerably smaller shares of before-tax income and paid considerably smaller shares of federal taxes.
I'm complaining about a media outlet lying by pretending that the federal income tax is the only tax that matters. You've responded by linking to a CBO publication that considers other taxes, not just income tax. That reinforces my point.
> In this report, CBO analyzed the distribution of four types of federal taxes: individual income taxes, payroll (or social insurance) taxes, corporate income taxes, and excise taxes.
So it's not like it's including sales or property taxes or whatever else. For all intents and purposes, that's "income" tax.
And the report is from 2013. This Washington Examiner article explicitly states (with a WSJ link for source) that the disparity has dramatically widened in recent years:
> That may be the highest ever. Just two years ago, it was 84 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal.
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-inc...)
Federal income tax provides nearly half of all federal revenue. It's not the only tax that matters, but it's certainly the most important and most visible. And any reforms will have the most impact to average citizens of any tax reform.
I have no problem with analyzing a subset of taxes. I have a problem with analyzing a subset of taxes and lying about it by just saying “taxes.”
Compare someone making 1 billion per year in capital gains from foreign investments vs someone making 30k per year in social security.