Close to flat tax= Top 1% now getting basically getting all the new wealth, rest going to hell. See sig PP1Your second table proves my point lol. That's basically a flat tax system,patently unfair, with the top 1% ending up with all the new wealth, and the non rich and the country going to hell...
No. The top 4 quintiles do not pay the same percentage.
What is very similar among taxpayers in the top quintile is the effective rate at which their income is taxed in aggregate, that is, across federal, state and local jurisdictions to which their income is subject to taxation. That's no surprise; they're all in the same quintile.
Be that as it may, that is not what you wrote. This is what you wrote:
- "Count ALL taxes and the top 4 quintiles pay the same percentage."
Now look at the chart below. If you are of a mind to talk about quintiles, you'll notice that the top quintile has been subdivided into four groups. Do you know what a quintile is? I don't think you do. What I know is that there isn't a credible source that's going to show that in the past lustrum the members of each quintile of taxpayers pay total taxes at the same effective or marginal tax rates.
There are some taxes whereof everyone does pay the same tax rate. Those taxes are what make the rates depicted in the last chart above be as close as they are.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiituWciqLSAhUh04MKHb2dCGYQFggtMAY&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres-why-the-47-percent-argument-is-an-abuse-of-tax-data/&usg=AFQjCNE_8LZl_VB-o4FAbNsJrxLxLCPy8g&sig2=Cj36bto8rX1hz7hzHI5FtQ
At the heart of the debate over "the 47 percent" is an awful abuse of tax data.
This entire conversation is the result of a (largely successful) effort to redefine the debate over taxes from "how much in taxes do you pay" to "how much in federal income taxes do you pay?" This is good framing if you want to cut taxes on the rich. It's bad framing if you want to have even a basic understanding of who pays how much in taxes.
There's a reason some would prefer that more limited conversation. For most Americans, payroll and state and local taxes make up the majority of their tax bill. The federal income tax, by contrast, is our most progressive tax -- it's the tax we've designed to place the heaviest burden on the rich while bypassing the poor. And we've done that, again, because the working class is already paying a fairly high tax bill through payroll and state and local taxes.
But most people don't know very much about the tax code. And the federal income tax is still our most famous tax. So when they hear that half of Americans aren't paying federal income taxes, they're outraged -- even if they're among the folks who have a net negative tax burden! After all, they know they're paying taxes, and there's no reason for normal human beings to assume that the taxes getting taken out of their paycheck every week and some of the taxes they pay at the end of the year aren't classified as "federal income taxes."
Confining the discussion to the federal income tax plays another role, too: It makes the tax code look much more progressive than it actually is.
Take someone who makes $4 million dollars a year and someone who makes $40,000 a year. The person making $4 million dollars, assuming he's not doing some Romney-esque planning, is paying a 35 percent tax on most of that money. The person making $40,000 is probably paying no income tax at all. So that makes the system look really unfair to the rich guy.
That's the basic analysis of the 47 percent line. And it's a basic analysis that serves a purpose: It makes further tax cuts for the rich sound more reasonable.
But what if we did the same thing for the payroll tax? Remember, the payroll tax only applies to first $110,100 or so, our rich friends is only paying payroll taxes on 2.7 percent of his income. The guy making $40,000? He's paying payroll taxes on every dollar of his income. Now who's not getting a fair shake?
Which is why, if you want to understand who's paying what in taxes, you don't want to just look at federal income taxes, or federal payroll taxes, or state sales taxes -- you want to look at total taxes. And, luckily, the tax analysis group Citizens for Tax Justice keeps those numbers. So here is total taxes -- which includes corporate taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, state sales taxes, and more -- paid by different income groups and broken into federal and state and local burdens:
As you can see, the poorer you are, the more state and local taxes bite into your income. As you get richer, those taxes recede, and you're mainly getting hit be federal taxes. So that's another lesson: When you omit state and local taxes from your analysis, you're omitting the taxes that hit lower-income taxpayers hardest.
Do you truly not see that even my second chart subdivides the top quintile into smaller groups? If you reconstruct the top quintile to determine its total tax rate as a percentage of income, you'll find that rate is 32.725%. That is not the same as the next three quintiles pay. That was your assertion, not mine. I'm merely showing you that you were wrong.
Reminding you of what you wrote:
Now tell me please whether 15.025% or 16.05% for the top quintile as depicted in the second chart I presented is the same as the rates shown there for the remaining three of the top four quintiles.
Even using the chart you provided from The Washington Post , one sees that the top quintile is again broken into four subdivisions. As before, one doesn't really need to do any math to see the invalidity of your claim. You claimed the top four quintiles pay at the same rate; however, looking at the rate captions of the bottom three quintiles, one sees they are not similar with regard to federal taxes, so there's no need to re-aggregate the segments of the top quintile. The figures for state taxes appear somewhat closer, but doing the math, one finds that for state taxes the top quintile's rate is 9.875%, which is not 11-anything-percent or 12-something-percent.
BTW, I think you just tossed an article at me rather than reading it carefully. The Washington Post chart you shared is nothing more than a graphic representation of the second chart I provided. You'd have known that had you read the article and linked content.
Also, here's the chart you didn't present from the article you did link. Look carefully at it....And read your own cited article while you're at it.
