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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

Have some facts:

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...

> In 2017, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGI below $41,740) earned 11.3 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid $49.8 billion in taxes, or roughly 3 percent of all federal individual income taxes in 2017.

> In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers (taxpayers with AGI of $515,371 and above) earned 21.0 percent of all AGI in 2017 and paid 38.5 percent of all federal income taxes.

> In 2017, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid roughly $616 billion, or 38.5 percent of all income taxes, while the bottom 90 percent paid about $479 billion, or 29.9 percent of all income taxes.

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> First, these numbers refer only to federal income taxes. Both the federal and the income part are important.

> The income tax is not the only tax collected by the federal government — far from it. Just half of the taxes collected by the federal government come from the income tax. About a third come from payroll taxes — which fall much more heavily on working people, since they’re largely levied only on the first $130,000 or so of earned income.

> Second, the wealthy naturally pay a disproportionate share of federal income taxes because they make a disproportionate share of the country’s income. In other words, these numbers to some degree demonstrate exactly the opposite of what those who use them claim: They’re not an indication that the superrich are beleaguered, but are in part a sign of America’s staggering wealth inequality.

> the top 1 percent — with an average income of about $2 million — made 20.9 percent of America’s income, but paid 24.1 percent of America’s taxes. Few people will perceive this as a monstrous injustice.

> Meanwhile, the middle 20 percent of Americans— with incomes between $41,000 and $66,000 per year — make 10.9 percent of America’s income and pay 9.4 percent of America’s taxes. The bottom 20 percent, making less than $23,000, make just 2.8 percent of America’s income and pay 2 percent of America’s taxes.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/13/tax-day-taxes-statistics...

The rich pay taxes roughly in proportion of what they earn.

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/04/ch...

The 98% of people paying 61.5% (a significant majority) of income taxes are all the little guy. Even a decent percentage of the 99th percentile would also be the little guy. The "super rich" capable of hiding millions from the IRS are an extremely tiny portion of the population.

One other thing there is an assumption that membership in these statistical categories are 'stable' Not really though. Lot of 'the 1%' are in it for short periods of time.

Other big issue is the super rich typically have full control over when, where, and how, a taxable event happens. For the wealthy most wealth building doesn't involve taxable events. One of my beliefs is the mortgage interest deduction is a sop to the middle class. Because otherwise the wealthy would out compete middle class families for single family homes.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Grouping together wages, capital gains, and misc under the label "income" rhetorically hides the unfairness of our regressive tax regime.

While it is certainly possible to give misleading statistics, these seem pretty reasonable to me? Could you say more about how you think it's misleading?

Pedantry is just another distraction, obfuscation.

GP's point is the IRS is unfairly focusing on the weakest while ignoring the worst offenders. No reasonable person disputes IRS's own repeated statements to that effect.

We can only guess the motives of any one still in denial.

Answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24603200

Nice share, thanks.

This is Vox's explainer of the same topic.

Who pays the lowest taxes in the US? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCGbAv8YPw

Just from skim reading, theintercept's article is based on a study from ITEP and Vox's data comes from taxjusticenow.org. I'd have to dig deeper to see if they're referencing the same data of if these are just complimentary studies.

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