The first column shows that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country. Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent.
By contrast, column #2 shows that the richest decile in America earned 33.5 percent of the market income in the country in 2005 – the year in which this snapshot was taken, but little has changed since then. But, a few other countries do have a greater or similar concentration of income as does the U.S. For example, the OECD table shows that the wealthiest decile of households in Italy and Poland earn a greater share of their country’s market income than do our “rich” – 35.8 percent and 33.9 percent respectively – while the share of income earned by the top decile of households in the U.K. is about on par with those in the U.S. at 32.3 percent.
The table then adjusts for the underlying allocation of income by showing the ratio of income taxes paid to the share of income earned by the top decile in each country. The ratio for U.S. households is 1.35, far greater than the ratio of taxes to income in any other country. Even in the three countries with a comparable distribution of income, the ratio of taxes to income was less, 1.18 in Italy, 0.84 in Poland, and 1.20 in the U.K.
Interestingly, countries with top personal income tax rates that are higher than in the U.S., such as Germany, France, or Sweden, have ratios that are closer to 1 to 1. Meaning, the share of the tax burden paid by the richest decile in those countries is roughly equal to their share of the nation’s income. By contrast, we prefer to have the wealthiest households in this country pay a share of the tax burden that is one-third greater than their share of the nation’s income.
Seems like some people — fellow citizens all — are already paying their “fair share” and then some.
But that won’t stop the class warriors from demanding more and more of their sustenance from the “rich”. Until the rich are gone. At which point they’ll start cannibalizing their own until no one is left, and nature starts over again. With the bees, probably.
It’s the nature of the pathology. The only way they could make it more obvious would be to adopt a slow shambling walk and moan for braaaiiiiiins.
(thanks to Dave O’C)
What kills me is that not only do the so called rich pay the lions share of taxes to finance all the public services we enjoy, and provide most of the jobs we all need, but they are also the ones that produce the goods and services we all want and desire.
And proggs want to stomp the golden egg out of the goose with jackboots.
‘Cuz really, who needs jobs and possessions when we have public services?
Their “fair share” is every frelling dime they have over some income level which can be agreed upon by a bunch of people who don’t make as much as the threshold value, or have a way to avoid paying.
If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend the Iowahawk essay wherein he takes the (satirical) position that the Federal Budget of $3.7T is a given, not a dime can be cut from that, obviously — so how do we pay for it?
It’s not unlike the old P.J. O’Rourke essay on the federal budget (from “Parliament of Whores”), only this one works the revenue side of the equation.
We really need a special and quite onerous Hypocritical Cocksucker Tax for filthy rich and smug lefties who give heavily to Democrats and sell the idea that people should make do with less (FOR THE PLANET!!!), while they themselves live however the fuck they want.
steal from the rich
link
Wow!
what a turd mittens is:
link
The Left has never been interested in wealth or its creation. They are interested in “fairness” and “equality [of outcome]”
They would rather the vast majority of people be equally poor than to suffer the successful.
Leftism really is a mental disease.
Obama and the Democratic Party: America #1!!!!! (in taxing the wealthy). Monaco* sucks!
* and Americans can’t take advantage of its tax haven status anyway.
I disagree: they are only interested in control.
Leans? Really? Is that the best they got? Leans=screws. Without lubricant. While bent over a dumpster behind an organic restaurant in Georgetown.
Ahh…good old fashioned class envy. My mom and dad are honest to goodness old time proprietors of this little trait. I had seen something to this effect before and was arguing it’s point and my dad just looked over at me and simply said, “You’re never going to be rich. So, why do you defend them?” I just said Dad, “you’re 65 years old. If you don’t understand it yet, you never will”. It’s not about “me”. It’s about liberty. Income/wealth is personal property and the class envy soldiers don’t see it that way.
OI, same here. Haven’t spoken with my father since the day after BOOOSH’s 2nd election. He was always a conservative, taught me consevative values…I don’t know what changed really. Anyway, he IS a narcissistic megalomaniac, always had been, so I guess he saw the writing on the wall and became a leftist for the power and control.
We’ll see how that works out.
Tax day is right around the corner, no? That should do wonders for a shitty economy.
[…] So we need empirical data. The Bush tax cuts were advocated on the basis that they would increase revenue. Some people say they reduced revenue, others say they increased revenue. This depends on how you measure things. If you want to prove that the Bush tax cuts increased revenues, you look at revenue raised from people who had been highly taxed before the tax cuts, in which case it looks very much that the tax cuts increased revenue. If you look at total revenue,looks like they reduced revenue, perhaps because a lot of people who had formerly paid some income tax, now paid no income tax. Overall, the experience of the Bush tax cuts suggests that taxes on the rich in the US are well above the Laffer maximum, taxes on the poor are well below the Laffer maximum. So if the government has to have more money, it has to do what European governments do: Tax the working poor. […]