What do you think the average American is paying, Mq? The bottom 50% of the taxpayers for Federal Income Tax payments are currently paying $00.00, nada, zip, zero.
I don't know what Mq means by average, but you are talking about the median. For Tax year 2002, the median income [AGI] was $28,654. A taxpayer starts paying taxes with a taxable income of $5. [see your 1040]
63% of taxpayers use the standard deduction and I would think it's more than reasonable to claim that the vast majority of persons at or below the median are using the standard deduction. To claim that the bottom 50% of taxpayers are paying $0.00 in taxes, that means that the personal and dependent exemptions have to exceed all but $5 of AGI. The earned income tax credit drops out at $2,600 AGI and accounts for 21.7 million returns....that's worth a pause ... nearly 22 million taxpayers [plus dependents] have an AGI of less than $2,600 per year.... ~22% of taxpayers have an income of less than $2,600/year. [I've seen many a conservative claim that there is no poverty in the US.]...how far would you get with an income of $2,600 per year?
Hence, I don't believe your claim.
I think the US Government begins to think someone is rich when the family of 4 income is about $70,000-75,000.
The US goverment works in percentiles for their statistics. "Wealthy" is not a category. For TY 2002, the top 1% has a break point at $285,424. The top 10% has a break point at $92,663. The bottom 10% has a break point at $5,392. I would imagine that the bottom 10% views the top 10% as "wealthy" and I would guess that no one who makes $100,000 AGI views themselves as wealthy. For discussion purposes, I would arbitrarily set "wealthy" as the top 1%.
jttmab |
