The distribution of the wealth and income in the US is lopsided. after the great depression, the government heavily taxed the most affluent Americans to pay for the war and also launch the economic recovery that started after the war ended.
Since 1980, the GOP reversed the tax reforms of the New Deal with the voodoo concepts in supply side economics. The most affluent American now pay a 35 per cent income tax rate that is only marginally different form the rate of the average American.
As Politifact points out, the most affluent Americans make less than 20 per cent of their income from working. Most of the income comes from capital gains from stocks, bonds and rental income.
Capital gains is a 15 per cent tax rate meaning most billionaires and millionaires are subject to a lower tax rate than the average middle class family. However, because income distribution in the US is so unequal, 45 per cent of Americans pay no income tax at all. Add that to the other 4-5 per cent of Americans who evade paying federal income tax, about half of the population pays no federal income tax at all.
But that doest't mean many Americans don't pay taxes. All American pay taxes and most pay more in municipal and sales tax than they do in federal income tax.
Here’s the Politifact rundown of the federal tax burden for the top 1 percent:
- Federal income taxes: 39.5 percent share
- Federal payroll taxes: 4.1 percent share
- Federal corporate taxes: 57.0 percent share
- Federal excise taxes: 4.7 percent share
Total federal tax share for the top 1 percent: 28.1 percent
So -- using 2007 numbers at least -- Bachmann is off by quite a bit. She’s even further off if you use an estimate for 2010 by the centrist to liberal Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which pegs the share of all federal taxes for the top 1 percent at 22.7 percent.
A bigger question is why a political party who claims to represent the common man would care about the tax burden of the top one per cent of Americans. Listen to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh you will hear about the white man's tax burden of the affluent constantly.
This is why the GOP reforms that tax code when they win the presidentcy and fires or redirects IRS auditors so they can no longer catch high roller tax cheats. When Bush was president, he ordered the IRS to primarily audit people who were applying for earned income tax credits who are the poorest Americans.
sources: Politifiact and http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
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