Monday, April 10, 2017

THE TAX MAN COMETH

With tax day just around the corner for many of us, I found the data regarding who pays what for income taxes to be quite interesting.  First, looking at this chart, you will see that the top 1% of income folks pay almost 40% of income taxes, and the top 20% pay nearly 95% of all taxes.  Notice that the bottom 40% receive a portion of the taxes rather than paying.

 

Here is the actual dollar breakdown [with some discrepancies from above chart]:



Next is another look at the income tax data.  A whopping 45% of households pay no income tax.

 
 And who are these folks who don't pay income tax?

And lastly, where does it all go?  [this is pre-Trump who proposes to increase one of the biggest players while decimating some of the smallest players]

6 comments:

Bizzy Brain said...

VERY informative information! Thanks!

Douglas E said...

de nada; working on ours today, so am generally in a pissy mood :-)

John Riegsecker said...

Filed mine today and got an email that the IRS has accepted my return. Not fun to see that money get sucked out of my checking account, but I think we can agree it is better to be in the group that pays taxes than in the group that doesn't. What I would like is more say on how the money gets spent.

Douglas E said...

JR - completely agree. Also, when I filed, I got the email that the IRS rejected our return. Checked why, and had entered the wrong SSN for Rhonda - duh. So fixed and sent again, and it was accepted.

Bizzy Brain said...

Since the 47% or whatever it is that don't pay taxes could care less about government fiscal responsibility and will invariably vote for Santa Claus, I would like to see either everyone taxed and forced to pay something, or voting limited to only those who pay taxes. As I bonus, I would eliminate payroll federal tax withholding and make everyone pay a lump sum of what they owe for the year due the day before election day.

Douglas E said...

I agree with the ideas that everyone needs to contribute something via taxes; I would like to see the income tax dumped for a national sales tax, with variable rates for different commodities, e.g. low for essentials with escalating rates for 'non essentials'. I like Hong Kong's tax rate for cars - around 100% :-)