Interesting argument that the wealthy pay much more than their “fair share”.-Lou
Flight of The Millionaires: Reasons to Give Thanks For The One Percent
Forbes
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest tax data this month. The report details who contributed how much to federal revenues in 2009. The figures raise the question: why do so many in this country seem so eager to berate the ‘one percent’ rather than thank them for their extraordinary contributions to federal coffers?
According to the report, those in the top one percent had an average pre-tax income of $1,219,700 in 2009. Of this, they paid $353,000 federal taxes. Despite having earned 13.4 percent of the nation’s income, these individuals paid 38.7 percent of federal income taxes that year. To put it more starkly, this group makes less than 16 times as much as the average household but pays more than 40 times as much in federal income taxes.
Sure, the picture looks a little different when all federal taxes are included. With payroll, corporate, and excise taxes thrown into the mix, the top one percent contribute “only” 22.3 percent of all federal taxes. But in raw dollar terms, the average one percent household pays 23 times as much in total federal taxes as the average household—a difference of $337,700. Despite this, some politicians and activists claim with a straight face that our country’s top earners don’t pay their “fair share.”
Consider a world without such individuals—a world in which we have so taxed and vilified the most prosperous Americans that they all elect to follow Denise Rich and foreswear their U.S. citizenship in search of greater economic freedom. French President François Hollande is already learning this the hard way, as many of his country’s wealthiest individuals pack up and leave as a result of his proposed tax hike on French millionaires. Indeed, the U.S. itself has seen an eightfold increase in the number of Americans abandoning their citizenship (most, apparently for tax-related reasons). Since U.S. lawmakers have yet to show any ability to curtailing their spending, Uncle Sam would be looking to the remaining 99 percent of taxpayers to make up what would be a massive gap in income tax revenues due to the sudden emigration of the top one percent.
