US income inequality continues to grow

[Benton]

(07-25-2018, 04:03 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Those are the tax rates.  I'm asking about percentage of taxes paid as that would indicate burden.  

Ah, gotcha.   

I misread and thought you were asking about income tax rates.

Quote:This one only goes back to 1979, but from there the tax burden has decreased on the lower earners and increased on the higher earners.  


https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/shares-federal-tax-liabilities-all-households

Edit:  This doesn't account for rate of increase income, but the lower ends are not carrying a higher burden of the taxes.  I think the bottom 40% or something like that actually pay an effective rate of zero.

Eh, I'm not sure where that's coming from. I  remember reading something about the newer brackets effective rates would be somewhere around half of the face value (if your rate is 25%, your rate would be 13% ish when you factor in deductions and such). But the same would hold true for top earners dropping from 37% to 18% ish. 

Either way, I think a comparison of the 91% versus effective of the 37% would be pretty interesting. I did come across this with a quick google.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29861648/ns/politics-capitol_hill/t/how-tax-burden-has-changed/#.W1jOyIczI5Q

Quote:The Congressional Budget Office study found that a person in the middle of the income distribution (the middle fifth, if you divide the population by fifths according to income) paid an effective federal tax rate of 14.2 percent in 2005, while a person in the one percent of the population with the highest income had a effective tax rate of 31.2 percent. 

People in the lowest fifth, or quintile, had an effective tax rate of 4.3 percent, partly because tax law changes in the past ten years removed many low-income people from the income tax rolls entirely. They pay only payroll taxes. 
The lessening of the tax burden on the lowest quintile is a big change from 1979. That year, according to CBO, people in lowest income group (the bottom fifth of the income distribution) paid an effective federal tax rate of 8 percent.