However, recently released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service indicate that taxing away 100 percent of the income of every American who earned $500,000 or more in 2009 would still have left the United States with a massive annual deficit.
In fact, in tax year 2009 (the last year for which IRS has published statistics), the combined gross income of all Americans earning $500,000 per year or more was about $1.03 trillion ($1,029,256,075,000.00) of which these Americans paid $256.7 billion ($256,699,499,000.00) in federal income taxes.
That left this group of Americans about $773 billion ($772,556,576,000.00) in income that the federal government had not taken away in income taxes. Also during tax year 2009, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt increased by $1.61 trillion ($1,611,544,812,899.90).
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