Post by jgaffney on Jul 28, 2011 11:37:11 GMT -5
A cursory analysis of income tax statistics provided by the IRS puts the lie to President Obama's claim that we just need to raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires." If you are not scared off by Excel and analyzing numbers, you will find that:
- For 2008, the latest year that individual income tax data is available, there were 319,068 taxpayers at or above $1 million in income.
- Those 319,068 taxpayers earned a total of $938,372,909 in gross income, and $934,695,460 in adjusted taxable income.
- Those 319,068 taxpayers paid $254,715,512 in taxes on that $934,695,460 in taxable income, for an overall tax rate of 27.25%. Remember that many income tax filers in this category are business owners, so the earnings from the business show up on the individual income tax return.
- If we increased the tax rate to 40% on this group, it would only bring in another $121.5 billion, chump change in today's budget debates.
- Even if we took all of their money, an effective tax rate of 100% on the $934,695,460 in adjusted taxable income, it wouldn't be enough to cover all of the spending proposed in Obama's budget. Tax increases will have to work their way down the income scale into the "middle class" that Obama has promised to protect.