(October 13, 2011 at 8:35 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: Since the top 1% owns 1/3 of the nation's wealth, they should be paying 33% of the nation's tax income to maintain the nation.
Firstly, I want to make it clear that I do not disagree with you in principle. We're on the same side. Also note that I'm not advocating that our income tax is OK as it stands today - it's not, but I'm not sure that tax rates/brackets are the problem.
I haven't seen any statistics regarding tax burden by assets (as we don't tax by that metric), but I have been watching the reports on tax burden/income by quintile for several years - and those reports do indicate that the top quintile does in fact pay a larger share of income tax both in terms of percentage of income and in absolute dollars. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any recent numbers broken down with any more precision that by quintile, but I do recall that in the mid 2000s that the trend continued for the top 10%, 5% and 1%. If I recall correctly, these were reports from the Congressional Budget Office - when I have time to do so, I'll see if I can find the most current reports.
Do you have any current information on either tax burden-to-income or asset ratios? Not anecdotes, I've heard plenty of those, and those cases represent problems of a different sort that also ought to be addressed.
