[baby-yoda]

I believe the post you replied to is referring to the total share of Federal income taxes collected paid by the percentile of returns.

i.e. the top 1% of tax filers by income paid nearly 50% of all taxes collected.

This is accurate per the latest statistics released by the IRS, for tax year 2021; the top 1% of returns paid 45.78% of all taxes collected.

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-stat...

[xscott]

Another link with the same data in a table:

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

It's funny. If you had 100 people in a room, there's one guy paying for about 45 people. And the next 4 people are paying for about 5 people each (20 total). And the lowest paid 50 people combined are paying for about 2 people total.

I think we should just not have the bottom half of income earners in the US pay any taxes. It wouldn't change the numbers much, and then it would be one less thing for them to complain about.

However, I don't expect anyone to put down their torches and pitch forks any time soon. It's too easy to use this to get people spun up, even above average educated people as in this forum.

[pclmulqdq]

That data is not adjusted for wealth transfers and other social programs. If you do make the adjustment, you will find that a majority of Americans are not net taxpayers at all. That number may be as high as 60%. The data on this is obfuscated by having 10000 different programs partly so you can't see what the real distribution of federal revenue is like.

[daedrdev]

Some people are negative of I think, so its not an perfect example

[mandmandam]

Those 50 under-paid and exploited people own just ~3% of all the wealth in the room, even though they're doing about 30% of the work.

Where does the vast, vast majority of the value of their work go? It goes to the asset class - the top 1 or 2 people.

And you call the top guy generous because he pays ~40% tax on the money the bottom 90% made for him.

Even as he buys politicians, runs monopolies, subsidizes fossil fuel, and strip mines the planet for even more.

Don't make out like the 50% of people making 2 or 3% of income are just ungrateful, or bad at math. The insane level of inequality in America is literally an existential threat to humanity.