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by BoiledCabbage 3354 days ago
> Those making $250K and up are responsible for 51.6% of all income tax revenue. How much more should they be expected to contribute?

And this is what is so annoying about groups complaints about the wealthy paying taxes. The heavy reliance on misleading statistics.

The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income?

An entire article that not once answers the most obvious question even though they clearly have the data to answer it.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about Adjusted Gross Income (which is the total after taking every possible deduction in the book), but actually gross personal income. The latter usually isn't reported. The former is which often is used to make percentages of taxes paid seem higher.

And I don't know the answer, it may even help their case - but the fact the most obvious stat question isn't brought up in arguments for why taxes on the wealthy are too high makes it easy to conclude these aren't discussions in good faith.
2 comments
patrickmay 3354 days ago
> The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income?

Did they get 51% of all the benefits of how that money was spent?

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anarazel 3354 days ago
More, quite possibly. They're likely using infrastructure more heavily (primarily due to the way they make money), they more likely to rely on subsidized work by others (employing people on medicaid etc, because they're not provided health care via employer)...
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tptacek 3354 days ago
It's hard to say, but anyone who is a part of a demographic minority that has collected 51% of all the income in a country's economy has clearly gotten some additional benefits.
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twoodfin 3354 days ago
The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income?

Probably not. Some quick Googling finds this analysis:

http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-in...

It uses different split points, but claims that the top 5% of earners make about 35% of the total AGI, but pay 59% of gross income taxes.

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dragonwriter 3354 days ago
Of course, federal "income taxes" are less than 2/3 of total federal taxes on income.
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