[bluedevil2k]

How is it not fair? People who make more than $200,000 (about 4% of the country) pay 50% of the income tax collected in this country. 4% pay 50%! The other 96% pay 50%. That seems incredibly slanted towards the lower class to me.

[glesica]

You're comparing numbers that can't be reasonably compared. Yes, one is small and one is large, but that's meaningless. To illustrate why, let's make things simple.

Assume a society with two people. One person, Adam, has income of $100 and the other, Beth, has income of $10. Set the tax rate (flat tax here, libertarian wet dream) to be %10.

So, Adam pays $10 and Beth pays $1. Adam is 50% of the population, but pays almost 91% of the taxes! That is literally the comparison you made in your comment, percentage of the population versus percentage of the taxes.

The comparison that would actually mean something would be percentage of the income versus percentage of the taxes. For this, we can get numbers from a variety of places, I grabbed the 2003 income inequality data from Wikipedia. Turns out, that top 4% of the country that you're talking about (at least in 2003) earned 55-60% of the income (the data I used don't allow an exact figure for the 4% number).

Now those numbers are a little closer together, not so likely to cause outrage, wouldn't you say? That group paid 50% of the taxes and earned about 55% of the income.

[gyardley]

Let's say you make twice as much as me. Would it be fair to charge you twice as much for a restaurant meal or a gallon of gas or a haircut, just because you make twice as much? Of course not - for any other good or service, your income is irrelevant. So why are payments based on income 'fair' when it comes to government services?

I'm not saying a progressive income tax isn't necessary, but calling it fair is laughable. For once it'd be nice to hear a politician say "we realize that whether your tax rate goes up a few percent or down a few percent, you're still going to be paying a whole lot of money for the same government services a good portion of our nation gets without paying a dime - and we appreciate that."

[glesica]

What you just cited isn't a progressive income tax, it's a flat tax. Twice as much income -> twice as much tax. So we both pay, say 0.01% of our income for the haircut. So are you saying that even a flat tax is unacceptable?

As to your point about people getting government services without paying, the chief reason for that is that if we demanded that everyone pay we'd either end up giving their money back to them or letting them starve in the street. So they just get to keep it, which is easier to administer.

And no, no one owes you a big "thank you so much" for paying taxes. Your "thank you" comes in the form of that big paycheck you got thanks, in part, to the government and the society creating an atmosphere in which success can be rewarded.

It has been pointed out before that if you are truly looking for a libertarian country, you should move to Somalia. How much money do you think you could may there?

[gyardley]

Read my comment again, where I said "I'm not saying a progressive income tax isn't necessary..."

How do you get "are you saying that even a flat tax is unacceptable?" out of that, given that I said exactly the opposite?

The issue is entirely with the word 'fair' and the rhetoric around 'fair share'. Progressive income taxes are not remotely fair by any sane definition of the word, whether they're necessary or not.

[hackinthebochs]

It's fair because wealthy people cannot exist without a society constructed in such a way that allows them to acquire large amounts of wealth. In the natural state, you can only "own" as much as you can defend. It's society that allows one to accumulate wealth because the burden to protect it is distributed. Simply put, its fair because those government services you speak of disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

[Steko]

Taxing income is just an efficient way of taxing wealth i.e. what's left over after people pay for basic needs.

The top 4-5% have 60%-65% of the wealth yet pay only 50% of the income tax assuming your data is correct (wikipedia says top 5% pay 59% of income taxes). Other taxes(FICA, etc.) are often regressive. The top 5% pays just 44% of all Federal taxes.

This suggests that the tax code favors the wealthy if anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United...

[brown9-2]

Of course the richest Americans pay the largest share of the income tax. They are the richest, so they have the most income to tax!

"Fair" in this context is referring to the percentage of your income paid as tax. It is not "fair" is someone richer than myself pays a lower rate than I do. It is of no comfort to me that the dollar amount they pay is higher than me if the rate itself is lower.

[mrgoldenbrown]

Your statement is misleading. If those 4% of the country are paying 50% of taxes because they are taking home 50% of the money made last year, that seems exactly fair!

[ars]

They aren't. Not even close.

[Aloisius]

You are either being intellectually dishonest or you suffer from innumeracy.

The richest 5% will always pay more than 5% of the taxes. The only way they wouldn't is if everyone made exactly the same amount of money.

Instead of worrying so much about the group of people who control the majority of the wealth in this country, maybe it would be better to focus on increasing the wealth of the 30% of this country that is near poverty.

[khuey]

Just by itself that fact is useless. If those 4% have 99% of the income, then you can easily argue that that is not fair.

[bicknergseng]

Live on $30k - $2600 a year and tell me that the tax system favors the poor.

[antidaily]

Not in a historical context.

[bluedevil2k]

Explain what you mean by that? The first income tax was on the top 1% of income earners and created in 1913. In the 60's and 70's, top tax rates of 60-70% weren't uncommon. The history of the income tax in America has always placed a heavier burden (some may argue much heavier burden) on the high-income earners.

[Variance]

And may I also add that history is just history, and things aren't automatically good or bad because we did them in the past. The country is pretty tolerant towards Wiccans given the historical context of the Salem Witch Trials, but that hardly means that we should re-institute witch burning just because it's the historical context.

[antidaily]

Hahaha. Great point. Going to use that the next time someone brings up the Bill of Rights or the founding fathers.

[gte910h]

You're just looking at the income tax. You have to look at all taxes.

I'm sure people who make more than $200,000 pay all the gift tax as well, as well as all the estate tax, all the yacht harbor fees, and a good portion of all income from the AMT.