Quote:
Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but it seems to be entirely misleading. Everyone pays taxes at the lower brackets; only some people pay taxes at the higher brackets. So of course, those first few dollars of income are going to supply a good chunk of tax revenue. But that doesn't mean it's all coming from poor people; it's coming from everyone who actually earns money. And then the IRS goes back and takes even more from people earning even more.
Worse, the notes about the changes in 2001 undermine your argument-. If the reason the rich are paying less is because k-gains went down, then that has nothign to do with tax rate policy, and everything to do with how people are earning money, and how much.
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First, what I'm saying is that 62.2% of total tax paid is generated at the 15% and the 27.5% tax bracket. The top 5% of taxpayers pay 53.3% of total tax. This was simply in response to the argument that the wealthy pay all the taxes, and that their tax burden falls entirely on the wealth they have that none of the rest of the po' folk have.
Second, if you read the quote more carefully, you'll see that it's corrected to take into account capital losses. The drop is attributable to a
lower capital gains tax rate.
