On 7/16/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html&tntemail0=y
Here's the link to the Free version: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html I noticed this curious piece of accounting that Mankiw resorts to: the idea that corporate taxes should be counted as taxes paid by its shareholders i.e. the rich. So a corporation's taxes are its shareholders, but its liabilities are not. Very nice. -----------------------------------------snip The best source for objective data on the distribution of the tax burden is the Congressional Budget Office. The C.B.O. goes beyond anecdotes and bald assertions to provide hard data on who pays taxes. One can argue about the details of its methods, but there is no doubt that it is nonpartisan and that its tax analysts are some of the best in the business. ......................... When the C.B.O. studies the tax burden, it includes all federal taxes, including individual income taxes, payroll taxes and corporate income taxes. In its analysis, payroll taxes are borne by workers, and corporate taxes by the owners of capital. For the richest 1 percent of the population, 9.3 percentage points of their 31.1 percent tax rate comes from the taxes that corporations have paid on their behalf. The corporate tax would undoubtedly loom large if the C.B.O. were to calculate Mr. Buffett's effective tax rate. -raghu.
