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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (12783)	8/20/2003 11:30:36 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I didn't get my facts from Rush. I got them from the tables of income tax breakdown that the IRS publishes a few years after the tax season closes for that particular year. 96% of all income tax collected is paid by the top half of all filers, which in 1999 happened to be anyone making above 26,400 or so and in 2000 is just slightly higher. Don't take my word for it, check the tables yourself. taxfoundation.org Social Security and Medicare is a transfer tax, it's not an income tax but if you insist on including it we can talk about average tax because that is far more indicative of the tax burden a particular class of filer pays. The average Federal tax payment by someone who makes an ordinary income (25-60k) is anywhere from around 15% to 20% depending on how many itemized deductions they have. This figure includes SS. This is fairly consistent with someone in the 35% marginal bracket which starts at 311k, I usually figure a 20% average rate unless someone is getting income from something that isn't subject to Federal tax like munis. Someone with a poverty level income falls to the baseline 15% SS with some getting "earned income credits" even if they don't have children. A person making 12k, with only themselves as an exemption pays about $320 in Fed income tax and about $738 in SS/medicare with the employer paying the same amount. They have an average rate around 14%. It takes an awful lot of those to make up the tax payment of even one top 20% filer and this is why the total paid in is so skewed to the top half of filers.