Krugminator2
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- Aug 1, 2014
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I
Now, the top 1% makes most of the freaking money. So even paying a lower rate (and they pay a lower rate) they end up putting in more actual dollars. .
The US has the most steeply progressive income tax system in the Western world. Top income earners not only pay an unfairly disproportionate amount of income taxes but pay a disproportionate amount and higher rate even when you factor in payroll taxes which affect lower income earners the most (though they shouldn't be included because they are forced savings people get back) and when you factor in the lower rate on capital gains and dividends.
The reason people think "the rich" pay a lower rate is by citing sources that count unrealized capital gains as if they are income. That's it. No tax tricks. No loop holes. No secret offshore accounts. Just simply acting as if having an ownership stake in a business that increases in value over time is income.
Hardly right wing sources saying the same thing.
"America's Taxes are the Most Progressive in the World" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-the-world-its-government-is-among-the-least/
U.S. Taxes Really Are Unusually Progressive https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...axes-really-are-unusually-progressive/252917/
Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.)
Before you ask, this ranking takes account of employee-side payroll tax as well as the federal income tax.
According to the OECD, rich Americans bear a bigger share of the tax burden because they earn a bigger share of the income and because the US income tax system is more progressive.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/federal-taxes-are-very-progressive
The individual income tax boosts progressivity the most with effective rates rising from -4.8 percent for the lowest quintile to 25.3 percent for the top 1 percent.
There’s no question that we have a progressive federal tax system, thanks mostly to the individual income tax.

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