Who really pays the Income Taxes?

Who pays the
income taxes, and for whom does it benefit? Is every income accounted for
income tax?

With all the talk
of the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes and the tax cuts earlier
this decade only went to the rich, here are some facts to contemplate and you
as the reader can make up your own opinion.

• The
  statement above could be true when you look at it from a pure dollar point
  of view.  Someone who makes $500,000
  versus someone who makes $50,000, if they each get a 5% tax cut, the first
  one pays $25,000 less in taxes, where the second one only pays $2,500 less
  in taxes.

• I
  believe if you want to make an argument who pays more in taxes, you should
  look at a percentage of income paid and not the dollar figure.

Let’s look at some
facts here from the latest statistics from the IRS that can be found on their
website:

• The
  top 25 percent of income earners pay 86% of all personal, federal income
  taxes. That is up from 84 percent in 2002.
• The top 50 percent of
  income earners pay 97% of all personal, federal income taxes, which also
  means that the lower half of all income earners in this country pay 3% of
  all personal, federal income taxes. 
  The medium in 2006 was just over $48,200.
• What is amazing is
  that the top 1 percent of income earners pay 39% of all personal, federal
  income taxes, which is up almost 6 percent since 2002.
• 20
  years ago, the top 1% paid a little over 27 percent of all personal,
  federal income taxes, and the top 50 percent paid about 94 percent.

All the talk about
the lower income bracket not getting enough of a tax cut has a mathematical
problem.  How can you cut taxes for
someone who already pays very little or nothing?  That was actually answered during the tax
cuts in 2003 by cutting the lowest bracket from 15% to 10%.  So the people who pay most of their taxes in
the lower of two lowest brackets received a 30% tax cut. This obviously is not
a large dollar figure, but a nice percentage cut.  In addition tax credits were increased.

 Anyway, the issue
we have at hand is that the taxes are paid by a smaller and smaller part of the
population. This results in several problems:

• There
  is a large part of the population that is no longer contributing, even if
  it is a small amount.  Any tax law
  changes do not affect them and therefore they don’t care. 

• The
  smaller the pot from where the taxes come from, any changes in the economy
  or the behavior of people will have a much bigger impact on the amount of
  money received by the treasury.

The problem is
even worse than people not paying any taxes, you can actually get money back
even if you don’t owe any.  There are two
that come to mind, the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Credit. I think
the second one is a good thing as it is an incentive to work, and the more you
work, the more you get and it is capped at a low income and favors people with
children.  There is nothing wrong with
the Child Tax Credit, but I don’t see why someone actually needs to get a
refund beyond their overpayment.

The tax laws are
also screwed once you make too much money in the government’s point of view
regarding credits and deductions.  Anyone
making more than $100,000 is rich in the government point of view.  I would certainly disagree on that, ask a mom
or dad with two or three kids making in the low $100s if they feel rich.  Anyway, once you reach that level, many of
the deductions like tuition are being phased out, the child credit disappears
just to mention a few.  You will not get
a dollar for dollar deduction anymore for your mortgage, charity, state taxes
etc.  I could go on and on.  In some circumstances, because of the phase
outs, the effective tax rate for a certain income range (like the income from
$110K to $115K, which is just an example as it depends on the situation), is in
the confiscatory category where literately a huge chunk of extra earned money goes
to the government.  This is offset
somewhat by not having to pay social security taxes anymore, but that is story
for a different day.

I think what we
need is a flatter tax with less deductions. 
All of us should pay something, because once you have some money
invested, you might actually have some interest how it is spend.  We need to be generous to the ones in need
and the unfortunate, but that is not almost half the population that pays only
3 percent of the taxes.  We should be
more generous with families than with single people, nevertheless they should
all pay the same rate , just the dollar figure when you start taxing should be
different.

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Tags: benefit, decade, dollar figure, dollar point, fair share, federal income taxes, income bracket, income earners, income tax, irs, mathematical problem, point of view, statistics

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