It's more than a bit deceiving. It's part of a systematic disinformation campaign. It goes hand-in-hand with the outrageous lie that the estate tax harms family farmers.
But cutting taxes on the rich is indefensible on the merits, so deception is the only option if you're rich and you don't want to pay taxes.
Income percentile - % individual income tax paid - % all taxes paid
Top 10% - 83.4% - 65%
Top 5% - 69.4% - 53%
Top 0.01% - 26.4% - 19.2%
Note that anyone in the bottom 50% actually has a negative income tax contribution since they get tax credits.
For the top 0.01% of income earners, the average total tax rate is 46.3%. Much higher than I originally thought.
[1]https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-anal...
Oh, no, I'm sorry but it's the other way around.
The 'mass lie' is on the employer payroll tax side of the equation.
An employer payroll tax is for all purposes the same thing as an employee tax, but it's 'hidden' (i.e. you don't see it as a deduction) - but it's equally as oppressive.
Politicians love it because they can increase it without any visibility and no uproar.
It's about 30% in Sweden.
Also - up to ~50% income tax.
And then 25% VAT.
Can you imagine if Google had to take 30% of your salary off the top before they paid you?
And then you're effective rate wast 10% higher (like 40%?).
And then everything you bought was 25% taxed?
And the other form of 'hidden tax' - in many places, prices have to be quoted with VAT to hide the 'hit' they take.
Admittedly you get healthcare for that.
It's very reasonable to call this confiscation of wealth.
If you're a professional, you're giving by far and away most of your earnings to the government to have them manage it on your behalf.
More precisely, 6.2% on a wage base limit of $127,200 for calendar year 2017, which amounts to $7,886.40 per person; 1.45% for Medicare without a cap, and an additional 0.9% withholding in excess of $200,000.
For the unindoctrinated, the IRS publishes these (and other related) details under Notice 1036[1] every year circa December.
(It's ~$10,000-$15,000 for valley salaries... https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/cbb.html )
If an average person starts doing everything they technically are allowed to do, they will be shunned socially. When that happens, beyond feeling bad, you lose your support network and can get into serious trouble in life. The rich don't have that problem. They don't need to rely on the good will of others to watch their kids, or to give them time off to go handle bank issues or medical problems.
I think it is more like a few hundred thousand dollars not really being a relevant amount of money to someone with hundreds of millions of dollars of stock on the line and the symbolism being useful.
(the left hand of the government says it has $2.8 trillion and the right hand of the government thinks that is a cool story https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/index.html )
Especially since it’s very much not a forced savings program. If it were, we’d pass on the remainder to our heirs if we died early, and we’d run out of money if we lived too long. It’s more like a forced annuity.
The vast majority of the US debt is owed to SS recipients.
And given that the total trust fund appears to be $2.8T, I'm not sure how it could hold the majority of the debt: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_oldage_and_survivors_insur...
[1] https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-debt-33...
I think to correctly frame what proportion any income group (or wealth group) pays, you have to look not just as federal income taxes, but at all taxes.
More to the point, and I think we agree here, the deception is by framing the discussion only about the "us federal income tax" when that is only 60% of the total federal income/payroll taxes collected. If you tell people that the top 1% makes 22% of the money and pays 40% of federal income taxes it makes them sound oppressed. If you tell people that the top 1% makes 22% of the money, has 35% of wealth and pays 25% of federal income and payroll taxes, the oppression disappears.