Tax rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush's 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006.
These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.
Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.
Finally, another inconvenient truth is that there have been 49 consecutive months of job growth as a result of the economic expansion induced by President Bush's 2003 tax rate reductions.
http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110010798
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/revenue growth.jpg
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-sm03182003.html
http://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=2685
Revenues increased ....
All your sources are from partisan cheeerleaders, so there is no surprise there.
This stuff just drives me crazy.
Here's the image from the Treasury
Tax cuts have a lagged effect. What this means is that when you get your tax cut, growth does not immediately began turning around. It takes 6 to 18 months before the stimulus kicks in. So the fact that the economy started turning before the lagged effect kicks in validates that the Bush tax cuts did not turn around the economy.
And I'll repeat Arthur Laffer - the father of supply-side economics - doubts the Bush tax cuts increased revenues.
I also find a disturbing lack of faith regarding the American people by the supply-side evangelicals. Its not the industriousness and the inventiveness of the American people that is the reason for an economy growing out of a cyclical decline. No, its when you cut marginal tax rates 3%.