What the right always leaves out of its calculations is the SS FICA or Payroll tax, which is predominately paid by the people with incomes of $90,000 or less. They pay more than 95% of the FICA tax, and because it is 50% from them and 50% from their employees, it amounts to an imputed tax of 12.4% of the first $90,000 of total, not taxable, payroll income. A person making $1,800,000 a year from a salary only pays 0.67% of his or her salary as a payroll tax.
The other fallacy in your figures is that you do not note the average taxable income and total taxable income of the people making over $100,000 in taxable income and compare those to the average and total taxable incomes of people making under $100,000. If you did you would find out that your comparisons are not fair, since they, by omission, understate the ratios of income, thus making the richer people look to be paying much more on a percentage comparison then thay do actually. Also, unless you are totally heartless I would assume that you would not "income" tax people with incomes , say, under $12,000.
Under Bush, -and possibly under prior presidents- but Bush has been accelerating the trend-- the FICA tax has grown to be a larger part of the total tax revenues of the USG because of the income tax cuts for the rich, and the cuts on dividends and capital gains. There are continual studies that show more wealth concentrated in fewer hands in the US , we are starting to look like a third world country with such limited wealth concentration , and, eventually, this will lead to drops in consumer demand and production drops----ie a serious recession. |
