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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (546421)	1/27/2010 7:13:20 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574888

The corporate tax rate is the highest in the chart. The individual tax rate excludes state rates (which some of the other countries don't have and which can be over 10% in the US, Swtizerland's figure in your chart has to include them since its federal rate is much lower than the US's, but it doesn't include state tax in the US or our figure could be as much as 10 percentage points higher), is still higher than several other wealth countries, and close to others, so your -"They pay much less than the wealthy in other nations" comment is false. Also the US has the Alternate Minimum tax. A lot of these other countries don't have an the equivalent. If you look at what people actually pay in taxes, the US federal tax system is more "progressive" than that of most other wealthy countries. --- News To Obama: The OECD Says the United States Has the Most Progressive Tax System by Scott A. Hodge Barack Obama's admission that his policies would "spread the wealth around" has ignited a nationwide discussion of how progressive the tax system should be and how it should be used to redistribute income among Americans. Obama has been very successful in bolstering the conventional wisdom that the U.S. tax system does not place a significant enough burden on wealthier households and places too much of a burden on the "middle class." But a new study on inequality by researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris reveals that when it comes to household taxes (income taxes and employee social security contributions) the U.S. "has the most progressive tax system and collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population." As Column 1 in the table below shows, the U.S. tax system is far more progressive—meaning pro-poor—than similar systems in countries most Americans identify with high taxes, such as France and Sweden. Even after accounting for the fact that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. have one of the highest shares of market income among OECD nations, our tax system is second only to Ireland in terms of its progressivity for households. The table also shows that the U.S. collects more household tax revenue from the top 10 percent of households than any other country and extracts the most from that income group relative to their share of the nation's income. Of course, these measures do not include the litany of other taxes households pay in each country, such as Value Added Taxes, corporate income taxes and excise taxes, but they do give a good indication that our system places a heavier tax burden on high-income households than other industrialized countries. The study also shows that while most countries rely more on cash transfers than taxes to redistribute income, the U.S. stands out as "achieving greater redistribution through the tax system than through cash transfers."[1] Overall, the study finds that income transfer systems (social insurance, welfare) are "significantly more efficient than tax systems at reducing inequality, as well as more effective..." ... taxfoundation.org Follow the link to a chart with 5 different measures of progressiveness of taxation. The US is the most "progressive" in 3 measures, and is more so than the OECD average in all measures. The table is not easily reproducible here but here is some of the information. Higher is "more progressive" Concentration coefficient for household taxes US 0.59 OECD 0.43 Concentration of household taxes and market income - Gini coefficient of market income US 0.46 OECD 0.45 Concentration of household taxes and market income - 3. Ratio of concentration coefficients (1/2) US 1.28 OECD 0.96 Share of taxes of richest decile US 45.1 OECD 31.6 Ratio of Share of taxes of richest decile to Share of market income of richest decile US 33.5 OECD 28.4 Source: Computations based on OECD income distribution questionnaire. dx.doi.org 1. The concentration coefficient is computed in the same way as the Gini coefficient of household income, so that a value of zero means that all income groups receive an equal share of household transfers or pay an equal share of taxes. However, individuals are ranked by their equivalised household disposable incomes. taxfoundation.org ----------------------- Where the US is less progressive/socialist is in terms of spending. We spend less national government money (as a percentage of our total national income, certainly not in total, and probably not even per person) on the poor and lower middle class. That's a separate issue from the progressiveness of taxes, where we are effectively the most "progressive"