Posted on 12/06/2005 8:33:51 AM PST by Marxbites
Who pays the taxes Dec 6, 2005 by Bruce Bartlett ( bio | archive | contact )
Email to a friend Print this page Text size: A A A few weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service released data on tax year 2003. They show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent.
Not only are these data interesting on their own, but looking at them over time shows that the share of total income taxes paid by the wealthy has risen even as statutory tax rates have fallen sharply. A growing body of international data shows the same trend.
On the first point, we see that in 1980, when the top statutory income tax rate went up to 70 percent, the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers was just 19.3 percent. After Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1981, which reduced the top rate to 50 percent -- a massive give-away to the wealthy according to those on the left -- the percentage of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent rose steadily.
By 1986, the top 1 percent's share of all federal income taxes rose to 25.7 percent. That year, the top statutory tax rate was further cut to 28 percent -- another huge-give-away, we were told. Yet the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent continued to rise. By 1992, it was up to 27.5 percent.
Of course, it would be a mistake to conclude that tax increases will not raise the wealthy's tax share or that tax rate cuts always will. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers almost doubled during a time when the top income tax rate fell by half.
A common liberal retort to these data is that they exclude payroll taxes, which are assumed to be largely paid by the poor. However, it turns out that when one includes payroll taxes in the calculations, it has far less impact on the distribution of the tax burden than most people would assume, because the wealthy also pay a lot of those taxes, too.
In a 2004 paper presented to the American Statistical Association, IRS economists Michael Strudler and Tom Petska calculated percentiles data that included both income taxes and Social Security taxes. In 1999, the top 1 percent paid 23.3 percent of combined payroll and income taxes, the top 10 percent paid 52.2 percent, and the top 20 percent paid 68.2 percent.
In recent years, a number of foreign countries have also started publishing tax shares data. They show the same trend of higher and higher burdens on the wealthy even when tax rates are cut sharply.
For example, according to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the share of total income taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers was 11 percent in the United Kingdom in 1979, when the top income tax rate was 83 percent. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher cut that rate to 60 percent, and by 1987 the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent had risen to 14 percent. The top rate was cut again to 40 percent, where it still stands, and the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent continued rising to a current level of 21 percent.
Statistics Canada recently released a study looking at tax shares in that country. It shows that the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of taxpayers reached 52.6 percent in 2002 -- almost exactly the same as is paid by the top 10 percent in the United Kingdom. However, the top income tax rate in Canada is just 29 percent. (Provincial tax rates in Canada are very substantially higher than among U.S. states.)
Finally, we now have data for Australia from the Australian Taxation Office. In 2003, they show the top 5 percent of taxpayers paying 30.2 percent of all income taxes, the top 10 percent paying 41.8 percent, and the top 25 percent paying 63.8 percent. But the top income tax rate in Australia is 47 percent. Thus we see that the country with the highest top rate also brings in the least amount of total income tax revenue from its richest citizens in percentage terms.
At some point, those on the left must decide what really matters to them -- the appearance of soaking the rich by imposing high statutory tax rates that may cause actual tax payments by the wealthy to fall, or lower rates that may bring in more revenue that can pay for government programs to aid the poor? Sadly, the left nearly always votes for appearances over reality, favoring high rates that bring in little revenue even when lower rates would bring in more.
Have you, and which Keynsian statist was it?
Yup, Dr Dave Denslow, UofF 1979 - he taught us the Laffer curve - and I then voted for Reagan.
Everything you say is in conflict with Reagan/Hayek/Rothbard
Just how young and green are you know-it-all?
he who robs Peter to pay Paul Wellstone ends up with a sore
peter
Well, the maybe not trillions, but the fed does take in hundreds of billions. And what do they produce? Paper with numbers on them.
There was NO Govt prior, just the Crown, unless you mean the period after the Declaration.
And that took so long because the states were reticent to give too much of their own power to a central Govt, for they well understood mans weaknesses.
Do you understand limited and enumerated?
That's what we no longer have, and capitalism has nothing to do with it's loss, just business & politicians.
But hey if you can do nothing but criticize, while ignoring the truly explanatory links I post, then I won't bother continuing a dialog with you - who seem about as thick as Parsy
I am Chicago school but have actually read Keynes which is more than I can say of those who believe they are attacking Keynesianism. My teachers were from several schools of economic thought but primarily Chicago.
You have not heard "everything" I say and I also doubt you have read von Hayek, Friedman, Keynes, Schumpeter, Marshall, Samuelson, Leoniteff, Marx, Smith or Ricardo since you appear to buy into the most cracked of the crackpot theories around. Read them sometime and it will help your understanding of economics.
I am old enough to be your father probably. And my posts are not the ones dripping with immaturity.
We had a government that existed since the signing of the Articles of Confederation. It was changed by the Constitution since it could neither obtain sufficient funds, carry out its intentions, or control state attacks on private property.
I understand that the Constitution did not limit federal power but vastly increased it. Its powers were not all enumerated but included implicit powers which were provided by sovereignty itself. Hamilton set out the clearest and best argument on constitutional actions in the Essay on the National Bank. Read it sometime.
Your "explanatory" links are anything but as I pointed out on the last one. The others on another thread had howlingly hilarious falsehoods in them. Try something from non-crackpot sources if you want to be taken seriously.
Sources such as?
All monetarists, I see
Let's see, I have at hand "Road to Serfdom" intro'd by Milty, and his "Fatal Conceit..."
Hazlitt - EIOEL
"Essays on Hayek" by Machlup, foreward by Friedman, and includes entries by Buckley, Dietze, Hartwell, Letwin....
Ya know this reminds me of the bar scene confrontation in "Good Will Hunting", neither character of which I am like, except I feel like Will before his rebuttal.
So, you are a Hamiltonion monetarist who believes in statism, in favor of a Govt who takes it orders from Industrialists who sought and got business subsidy and wealth protection, who were willing to go along with socialism because it empowered them, all at the expense of middle Americans, who see their incomes go the the dependents Govt incentivised?
BTW, I am 53 and self employed, and have stayed glued to politics and economics since receiving a graduation (UofF '82) gift of a small oddlot of IBM shares that inspired me to pay attention, read IBD & WSJ, Kudlow on CNBC, and all else I could since the advent of the internet. That was after serving four years in the military from 1972-76.
What about yourself?
Such as the post outlining the creation of the Fed on a recent gold is god thread.
All monetarists? Hardly. Ricardo, Smith, Leontieff, Marshall, Samuelson, Keynes, von Mises are not monetarists.
I have been a financial analyst for over quarter of a century after receiving my Masters in Economics. My minor was in History which is my true love.
Your description of my beliefs is no more accurate than the contention I only read monetarists. I do believe a strong national government in necessary in the real world as did Hamilton and Washington (and Madison at the CC). It is just foolishness to believe that the government is controlled by industrialists which is something a deep study of politics shows clearly not to be the case and never was.
Middle Americans do not pay the bulk of the taxes either rather the upper classes do. New IRS statistics just released clearly show that to be the case.
My military career never got off the ground since the Army decided I was not suitable in 1966 for physical reasons. But several of my brothers served including an Air Forces lifer. My elder son is currently a nuke in the Navy stationed on the Ohio out of Seattle.
Fair enough, I can accept correction, and I'm impressed.
But is the upper class, the same as the super elites like Rockefellers?
If history is your great love, how do you deny we were roped into WWI over the Royal Dutch / Std Oil fight over the Baku oilfields the Kaiser was building a railroad to?
And you deny any corporate welfare/price regulations vis the utilities & railroads had any influence on Govt exceeding it's bounds? With state schools programed to promote it was all in the common good if mentioned at all?
And that all your many profs were 95% leftists as polls have recently shown?
My hat's off to your sons, my Dad was on Subs out of Groton, enlisted underage at the end of the war and got to tow a U-boat back to New London.
He much later was a Boeing estimater at the Cape for Apollo before the big layoffs. His horror stories of Govt waste fraud and abuse and union shenanigans have most certainly colored my outlook. He died of liver cancer in '89 - too many 3 martini lunches, especially on successful on launch days.
Am I wrong that every dollar that goes to DC not expressly spent on protecting our rights equally among us, is money malinvested - money not available for job creation?
And do you agree fiducuary responsibility is highest when we spend our own money on our selves? And that interest in that responsibility decreases thusly:
1) Spending one's own money on one's self
2) Spending other's on one's self
3) Spending one's own on others
4) Spending other's on others ?
That number 4 is Govt's category and should be limited?
What about the costs of corporate subsidy? And tax money spent on special interests that does not benefit all equally?
And given your considerable historical knowledge; your take regarding the re-interpertation of the Gen'l Welfare, Commerce & Equal Protection clauses by judicial fiat, or their refusal to call unconstitutional that which is?
"This article brainchild has zip to do with the fair tax."
I used this to provide an example if adopted that the consumer pays all the taxes. You will never see the rich not recover what they pay in taxes because they provide service or sell to the consumer.
Come on, think a little.
My bad. It seemed to me you were picking nits on a different topic.
Of course consumers pay it all - regulation costs and taxes are passed through or biz's would go broke.
Wrong question.. What are taxes is the question.?..
i.e. All Federal, State, County(borough), and local direct taxes, plus all levys, fines, license fees, permit fees, other fees, interest from capital investments, bonds and other deficit spending, tolls, tariffs, and many other regional and national sources..
America is a socialist country NOW and a democracy by default.. The free republic is a myth only entertained here on Free Republic.. Democracy is Mob Rule.. Rule by gangs of connected cabals and their lobbyists.. The States have become merely extensions of the federal government.. Denial about this is the political fog you see on main stream media news.. and how there can be such a thing as a BIG GOVERNMENT REPUBLICAN..
Lets go one more. Income tax. In reality it is a paid tax to work. Think this one out.
If you did not have this income tax then your salary would be the total of what was left as taxed and the tax itself. (This is fun, isn't it)
*
You are correct - it is way worse than the general population's lack of historical intelligence allows seeing.
In actuallity it tends more to fascism - because Govt does not have possesion of the means of production.
I wish the Republicans would pick back up and amplify/expand the libertarian faction. The Dems are just too invested from their long reign of power to be any help whatsoever, even the Blue Dogs are squealing over the supposed "tax cuts for the rich" being made permanent - after all that hurts their ability to buy votes with OPM, their standard fair, and one the right seems to have taken up in too large a part as well.
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