President Biden is proposing a slew of new taxes… again.
His State of the Union address included the familiar call for the rich to pay their “fair share.”
He regularly makes this claim.
However, he never bothers to define who is rich, how much they pay or what is fair.
But since the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) just released its latest figures showing who pays what, now is a good time to parse this claim.
Some will be surprised to learn that the income tax in this country is already steeply progressive.
The IRS reports that the top 10% of earners pay more than three-quarters of all federal income taxes.
(That doesn’t include the payroll tax, which covers lower-income workers. But President Biden is making his “fair share” claim about income taxes, so let’s stick to those.)
Here’s the latest breakdown…
The top 5%-10% of earners filed 7.7 million returns with income averaging from $170,000 to $253,000. They paid 10.2% of all income taxes.
Between the top 5% and 1% were 6.1 million returns with earnings from $253,000 to $682,500. These folks paid 19.9% of all income taxes.
The top 1% earned $682,500 or more and filed 1.5 million returns. They paid 45.8% of all the income taxes.
Clearly, the tax burden falls disproportionately on higher income earners.
The top 2% pay more income tax than the other 98% of Americans combined.
That makes it tough to claim that the tax code goes easy on the wealthy.
Maybe Biden’s point was that low-income people are paying more than they should?
But the numbers don’t support that contention either.
The Congressional Budget Office reports that – after accounting for the refundable portion of tax credits – the bottom 60% of taxpayers had an average income tax that was effectively negative.
The lowest quintile paid minus 27.6%. And even the middle quintile paid minus 2.4%.
That 6 out of 10 Americans pay nothing net of transfers is something to keep in mind when you hear the mainstream media report that polls show most Americans believe federal income tax rates are “about right.”
Did the rich used to pay more in the recent past?
Not in this century.
IRS figures show that in 2001 the top 1% paid only 33.2% of all income taxes. Now they pay 45.8%.
And as their tab has risen, the share paid by the rest of us has fallen.
The bottom 90% of taxpayers paid 36.3% of all federal income taxes in 2001. Twenty years later, their share had dropped to 24.2%.
To sum things up, the top 2% are paying most of the income taxes.
The bottom 60% are paying nothing or getting a net tax credit.
And the rich are shouldering an ever-larger share of the total tax burden.
Yet they still aren’t paying their fair share, according to Biden.
The courts have shown this is indeed true when it comes to his son Hunter and other family members. (And the ongoing investigation may ultimately snare the president himself.)
But the IRS figures show why Biden will never say who is rich, how much they pay or what is fair.
That would undermine his argument. And perhaps lessen support for his endless spending ambitions.
The ones that are driving up the debt, bankrupting our entitlement system, undermining our financial future, and endangering our national security.
(This year interest on the debt alone will – for the first time ever – exceed total defense spending.)
Of course, no one loses any sleep over what people who earn more than them pay in taxes.
So, while 2% of earners pay most of the federal income taxes, most Americans don’t know this. Most of the rest don’t care.
And it’s the votes of the 98% that Biden is after.