Taxes

Anti-tax protesters are often grossly misled about federal tax burdens and how the tax system has been rigged to favor the very people who are orchestrating false populist anger. Some facts:

• An April 2009 Gallup poll found that 61 percent of respondents felt that the federal income tax they will have to pay this year is “fair.”
• Thirty-nine percent of respondents with incomes below $30,000 said that they thought the federal income taxes they pay are “too high.” Says a Citizens for Tax Justice study, "This is remarkable, because only 32 percent of taxpayers in this income group will pay any income tax at all on their 2008 income." The remainder will pay an average of 2.6 percent of their earnings in federal income taxes.
• Tax burdens on middle-class families are already at their lowest levels in decades, according to a Center for Budget and Policy Priorities report and "Tax Policy Center data. Households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum paid an average of 14.2 percent of their income in federal taxes in 2006.
• But the tax burden for those at the very top—like the people who bankrolled the April 15 Tax Day protests—have fallen even farther, according to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. And they've gotten a disproportionate benefit from conservative tax policies. Almost one-fourth of the benefit of the the Bush administration tax cuts by 2010 will have gone to the 0.3 percent of households with incomes of more than $1 million per year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Less than one-sixth of the total value of the tax cuts will go to the bottom 60 percent of households.