Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Progressive Tax?

The rich hate the idea that they "pay more than their fair share" of the taxes. But here is a report by Citizens for Tax Justice that claims to have crunched the numbers and produced the following graph to show that the "burden" of taxes on the rich isn't that great. They pay a slightly higher percentage of their income in taxes while the poor pay a slightly smaller percentage, but it isn't that dramatic:


The graph I find most fascinating is how the rich beat the "progressive" income tax laws and end up paying a lesser percentage of their income that those at lower levels:


The above graphs appear to conflict with the following data from the CBO (Congressional Budget Office):


The apparant conflict is caused by the selection of data you choose to analyze. The CBO data is restricted to federal taxes. Citizens for Tax Justice include state and local taxes which tend to be more regressive, therefore they show the lower classes carrying more of their share of (the overall) taxes.

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