What Percentage Pays Income Taxes

Posted on by Forest in Saving Money & Finances

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What Percentage Pays Income Taxes? – Income tax is always a hot topic and especially with the occupy movements in full swing a lot of opinion is being flung around about who pays what and why. Some advocates of the movement say the rich don’t pay enough and some against say the rich pay too much and the middle classes shouldn’t allow themselves to be dragged into the whole thing either. So let’s take a look at who pays what and maybe i’ll give some of my thoughts on the whole thing

What Percentage Pays Income Taxes?

Some opposition groups to the 99% slogan have been throwing around the “we are the 53%” slogan to talk about the fact that 51% of Americans, basically the rich and the perceived middle class pay more or less all of the income tax in the USA.

Luckily for us the group NTU.org set out a simple table for the year 2009 so we can see how these percentages actually measure up. As you can see, assuming these figures are true, the 53% slogan is a true slogan and as you can see the top 1% pay a massive amount of the tax.

Tax Year 2009 

So it’s clear the richest people paying nearly 37% of all income tax in the United States are doing a very good thing to help keep the country floating and of course to some degree that has be respected. However in a society where we should all be here for each other, isn’t that just fair?

53% of people pay tax and that doesn’t mean that 47% should be condemned as good for nothing lay abouts. Sure some are but many are students, older people who have fallen on hard times due to the economic crash, people who got sick and all sorts of other things. I would bet (but I don’t know how to find out) that the percentage of that 47% that could be classified as “layabouts stealing off the state and not working for themselves” is about 1% or 2% of that at most. Contribution to a great society is so much more than about how much money you earn and subsequently how much tax you pay.

What Percentage Pays Income Taxes

The rich pay more, so what? Many studies have shown that happiness doesn’t really go up the more you earn (see our post: High Income Improves Evaluation Of Life But Not Emotional Well-Being) and other recent studies have also shown that a more equal society, a lower percentage gap between rich and poor, creates a better life for everyone, even the rich, see this TED video for more on that.

I’m happy to pay more as I earn more. I don’t feel that my merits are soley measured by how much cash I can have and how much crap I can consume. I am and have always been a tax payer and intend to keep doing it. However, of bigger concern to me is where are my tax dollars being spent?

I’d love your thoughts.

Related: What Percent Have Graduate Degrees?

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Tags: income tax, tax, who pays ta