In recognition of tax week, the media is embarking on a number of stories on the current tax situation. But by telling only part of the story the media paints a dishonest and distorted view of our tax system.
As expected, the Wall Street Journal leads the pack with its April 10 editorial Kerry as Fiscal Conservative - Following Clinton's lead, he would raise everyone's taxes. The editorial only tells part of the story on taxes. While pointing out the increase in taxes paid by the top fifth the Journal ignores their large growth in income.
The Tax Foundation shows that the top 25% saw their tax payments increase from 17.5% to 18% of income from 1984 to 2001, yet that group's share of overall income went from 57.5% to 65.2%. So for a small increase in taxes they got a huge increase in the overall share of U.S. income.
What conservative like to point out is how the top 1% of Americans pay a lot of taxes as their goal is to get people to think about how large of share of income they receive. And it works. One of the online responses to WSJ column included this gem -
"I understand that the top 1% currently pays about 33% of income taxes. John Kerry says this is not their fair share. Even with my poor math skills I can tell it is 33 times their equal share. So how much is their fair share?" Apparently this individual has bought the idea that has bought the idea everyone should pay an equal share of income taxes regardless of income, i.e. the top 1% should pay 1% of taxes, regardless of income.
The top 1% does pay around 34% of income taxes but they receive 17.5% of all income. In addition, these figures don't include social security tax which brings in close to two-thirds of the money the income tax does and the SSI tax is on income less than around $88,000 (Medicare does go higher) meaning it hits lower earning people a lot harder.
So in the end the top 1% of Americans share of income probably is close to their share of taxes. How is that unfair?
