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June 29, 2003
The rich get richer.
Very Richest's Share of Income Grew Even Bigger, Data Show This article had a lot of very interesting statistics.- Falf of all Americans earned less than $27,682 in 2000, and paid less than 4 percent of income taxes
- The top 1.3 million households represent 37.4 percent of individual federal income tax revenue.
- The rate actually paid by the top 400 in 2000 was about the same as that paid by a single person making $123,000 or a married couple with two children earning $226,000.
- In 2000, the top 400 on average paid 22.3 percent of their income in federal income tax, down from 26.4 percent in 1992 and a peak of 29.9 percent in 1995.
- The minimum income to qualify for the list of the top 400 wealthiest taxpayers was $86.8 million in 2000, more than triple the minimum income of $24.4 million of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers in 1992.
- The figures do not include the incomes of the many wealthy Americans who use shelters to reduce their reported incomes below the level of the top 400. Here is a great anecdote about that. "In 1999 and 2000, for example, William T. Esrey — then the chief executive of Sprint,... earned more than $150 million in stock option profits, ... That income might have put Mr. Esrey in the I.R.S.'s top 400 taxpayers. But, ..., Mr. Esrey bought a tax shelter from Ernst & Young, ..., designed to let him delay reporting the profits for tax purposes until the year 2030. "
- Over the nine years reviewed in the new report, the incomes of the top 400 taxpayers increased at 15 times the rate of the bottom 90 percent of Americans; their average income rose 17 percent, to $27,000, from 1992 to 2000.
- In 2000, there were 2,022 Americans with incomes of more than $200,000 who paid no income tax anywhere in the world, up from just 37 in 1977...
I'm not a financial analyst. Plus I live in a very expensive state. Certainly in California it appears the class gap is widening. I really can't speak for the rest of the country, though articles like this confirm my suspicions. Most amazing to me is the fact that I pay more in taxes than the wealthiest in the country. It seems like the argument over the exact % the wealthy have to pay is a red herring. The real issue is how to get them to pay taxes on the money they make. Individuals are by far not the worst offenders. The largest companies pay so little in tax. The government actually owes Microsoft money every year due to an employee benefits loophole. They're not the only ones either. Where is it all going?
Posted by wonko at June 29, 2003 10:33 AM
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