Tax Facts and the Income Redistributionists
Shortly before 5:00 P.M. this afternoon, a liberal called the Sean Hannity Radio Show concerned the rich, and especially the top quintile of taxpayers, just weren’t paying their “fair share” of income taxes. Like so many liberal talk show callers, he was short on facts.
So let’s look at the numbers put together from IRS data for Tax Year 2007 by the National Taxpayers Union (NTU):
Percentiles Ranked AGI Threshold Percentage of Federal
Ranked by AGI on Percentiles Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1% $410,096 40.42
Top 5% $160,041 60.63
Top 10% $113,018 71.22
Top 25% $66,532 86.59
Top 50% $32,879 97.11
Bottom 50% <$32,879 2.89
The NTU webpage has that Tax Year data going back to 1999.
It’s not surprising the liberal caller has so little knowledge of basic tax facts. Almost three years ago, talk radio show host Neal Boortz was interviewing U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). He wrote in Nealz Nuze for January 8, 2009 that “Kucinich started rambling about getting rid of the Bush tax cuts and making the rich pay their fair share of taxes, so I decided it might be time to see if this 10th District Congressman from Ohio actually knew what he was talking about.” Here, specifically, is what Boortz asked, and how Kucinich answered:
“Kucinich has a long history in congress of trying to shift the tax burden away from low and middle income Americans onto the backs of the high-achievers. In 2003 he sponsored a law that would give a "refundable" tax credit to protect low and middle income people from having to pay Social Security or Payroll taxes. Kucinich, who is chairman of the "Progressive" (that means liberal) Caucus also proposed something he called a "tax dividend" for every man, woman and child. Well, almost every man, woman and child. He wanted to limit the dividends paid to the top 1% of income earners to only 1% of the total tax cut.
“Well, there's our clue. Kucinich doesn't have any idea in the world how much of the total taxes are paid by the top one percent of income earners ... so I asked him two questions:
- What percentage of total income is earned by the top 1% of income earners?
- What percentage of total federal income taxes are paid by the top 1% of income earners.
“The answers were astounding. Congressman Dennis Kucinich thinks that the top 1% of income earners earns about 60% of all income, and he thinks that they pay about 15% of all income taxes. The fact is that the top 1% of all income earners pull in about 18% of all income and pay 38.8% of all income taxes.
“This is an astounding level of ignorance on such an important statistic. You can excuse a mother of three loading up on Happy Meals for her porky little kids at a McDonalds for not knowing this .. .but a member of the Congress? Remember .. the Clinton tax increase passed the House of Representatives by only one vote ... and Kucinich was there ... there without a clue ... there voting for a tax increase on people he thought earned 60% of all the income but were only paying 15% of all income taxes. Inexcusable.”
Gee, da ya think Rep. Jim Moran, (D-Virginia), Arlington County’s Congressman, would answer much differently than did his colleague Rep. Dennis Kuchinich?