Some tax facts to use when arguing with leftist idiots about the rich don't pay their fair share.
Those making $500k or more make up 1.4% of all tax returns but pay 43/5 of the taxes. The earn 25.9% of all reported income. The top 8.4% make $200k or more and pay more than 67% of all personal income taxes.
Keep in mind these statistics reported by the IRS do not include those who did not earn enough to file a tax return, meaning they made money but paid no taxes.
If you are curious about millionaire, or those make $1 million or more, they make up .7% of all tax returns, 14% of all personal income and pay 31% or all personal income taxes. I'll repeat that. .7% of tax filers pay 31% of all personal income taxes.
If you take all the income reported to the IRS and divide into the taxes paid you get an average tax rate of 14%. In other words, if we were to set a flat tax rate on all income - all income - of 14% we would collect the same taxes that we do now. I suspect by eliminating some adjustments we could probably get a flat rate down to 12% or 13%.
My personal opinion is every one should pay, no exception except maybe fore the elderly and or disable people. A tax rate of 14% would be lower than the current long term capital gains tax rate, and almost as low as some state tax rates. We could eliminate 99% of the IRS, reduce the tax forms to 1 page and simplify the law so everyone understands what they must pay.
The only reason we do not do it this way is it robs corrupt politicians of the carrots they love to dangle in front of voters to buy their votes.