On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Bruce Bostwick<lihan161...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > On Sep 6, 2009, at 8:11 PM, John Williams wrote: > >> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Rceeberger<rceeber...@comcast.net> wrote: >>> >>> On 9/6/2009 7:47:52 PM, John Williams (jwilliams4...@gmail.com) wrote: >>>> >>>> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Rceeberger<rceeber...@comcast.net> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> We do not tax everyone in the world, so they do not need to be >>>> >>>> considered as part of this discussion. >>>> >>>> "We" do not tax everyone in the US, so are you proposing not to >>>> provide health care to the about 50% of the US population that (net) >>>> does not pay taxes? >>>> >>> Name them. >> >> You mean name the bottom 50% of all taxpayers? I don't have enough >> space to do that in this email, but check the tables here, for >> example: >> >> http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html >> >> In 2007, there was $1.115 trillion collected in federal income taxes. >> The top 50% of taxpayers paid $1.083 trillion, or 97.1% of taxes >> collected. The IRS tables I found don't break it down for the bottom >> 50%, but obviously there is a percentile under 50, probably above 40, >> where there are no federal income taxes paid. >> >> Of course there are other taxes. But there is certainly another >> percentile where net aid exceeds the other taxes paid. And there are >> millions of Americans below that percentile. > > Yes, federal income tax is, theoretically at least, a progressive-rate tax. > I think everyone here knows that. > > There's a good reason for that.
I'm not sure why you brought this up. I certainly don't disagree with most of what you wrote. Perhaps you were not following the discussion between Rob and myself, where he suggested that those who do not pay US taxes should not receive health care? > Above the rapidly vanishing middle class. the theoretically higher-rate > brackets can afford to hire tax attorneys and accountants whose specialty is > finding ways to avoid tax liability, legally in most cases, so the actual > revenue collected falls off fairly rapidly above that level. That is incorrect. In 2007, the top 1% paid 40% of the federal income taxes, the top 5% paid 61%, and the top 10% paid 71% of taxes. If the middle class is 25%-75%, then the upper class, top 25%, paid a whopping 87% of federal income taxes. http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
