[rich_sasha]

The total tax intake is fairly unambiguous. Personal tax bill for the vast majority of people is also quite clear. But when you get to the top 0.1% or whatever it is, things like "income" and "tax" get ambiguous. I suppose a lot of the ultra rich don't have much earnings, at best cap gains, and even that can be offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam.

Maybe instead of looking at the ultra rich we could look at what GDP fraction the "bottom 95%" contribute to the tax burden - is that more or less than before. Not sure where to look for this data but sounds like a nice little exercise.

[gruez]

>But when you get to the top 0.1% or whatever it is, things like "income" and "tax" get ambiguous. I suppose a lot of the ultra rich don't have much earnings, at best cap gains, and even that can be offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam.

But the denominator isn't "income", it's GDP. That's far harder to "offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam".

[rich_sasha]

Sure - but not at an individual level. If you're asking, how much tax are the rich paying now vs before, as a % basis, you need an individual numerator and denominator.

Maybe the total tax take now is 17% of GDP, same as before, but when measured correctly, the overall tax rate for the super-rich has gone down, and for the plebs gone up.

To even identify who the super-rich are in this exercise, you may need to be careful with the definition of "rich". If eg you go for highest income earners, you might find upper middle class people instead, with the super-rich having no supposed income as such.