The Flat Tax Is Not Flat and the FairTax Is Not Fair
According to the Tax Foundation, tax freedom day came on April 12th this year. This means that everything the typical American taxpayer earned from January 1 to April 11 went toward meeting his total federal, state, and local tax burden.
Of all the taxes Americans are saddled with, the federal income tax is the most objectionable. Like most, if not all of you, I grudgingly filed my 2010 income tax return before the April 15th deadline last month. And although most other Americans did likewise, many people who filed an income tax return didn’t actually pay any income taxes.
According to the most recently released IRS data, the top one percent of taxpayers (in terms of adjusted gross income) paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in tax year 2008. The top 10 percent of taxpayers paid 70 percent of the taxes and the top 50 percent paid a whopping 97 percent. The “rich” are not only paying more than their “fair share,” they are also paying the share of many other Americans as well. And not only do the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers pay little or no income taxes, many of them actually get tax refunds anyway thanks to what are called refundable tax credits.
Clearly, something is wrong with the U.S. tax code.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
