A common mantra of anti-Bush forces is that his tax cuts benefit the super rich and hamper the "working poor". This has always struck me as particularly funny, since the tax "rebates" were based on the amount of taxes we had "over-payed" to the government. The so-called rich pay more than the so called-working poor. In fact the people whom we routinely visualize as working poor, those who earn minimum wage or slightly more, don't pay anything in taxes beyond Social Security deductions. The earned income credit rebates their taxes at the end of the year in addition to any tax refund they are eligible for.
The idea that the tax cuts are actually not benefiting the rich is evidenced in a new study published here and discussed at length in this excellent NRO article.
The synopsis, for those of you not really up to slogging through IRS data, is that "the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year [2003]. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top 25 percent paid 83.9 percent." Add to this "but looking at [the data] over time shows that the share of total income taxes paid by the wealthy has risen even as statutory tax rates have fallen sharply" and you have some statistical proof that, as corporate profits and revenues have grown, the rich in this country are paying more in taxes than they were many years ago.
Next on tax issues for the working oppressed (you saw him, he's oppressing me!): the Alternative Minimum Tax and why you are now "rich".
Scarlett Says: We can cut $8 billion dollars a year from the Federal budget by eliminating the IRS.
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