Social injustice
April 10, 2010On the day my wife spent preparing our 1040, I came across two articles about who pays federal taxes (via TigerHawk). This chart comes from ClusterStock.
The accompanying article begins:
Here’s why government spending is really out of control.
First of all, half of Americans don’t even pay income taxes, but it gets worse. If we look at total federal taxes, 20% of Americans pay 70% of taxes, as shown above. 40% of Americans pay 95% of federal taxes.
And this is from the second article at Yahoo! Finance.
Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem.
About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.
Are we to the point of bread and circuses yet? Why wouldn’t someone who pays little or no tax vote for those who are good at increasing government spending? Why not?
As they say: If you want peace, work for justice. An equitable tax code would be a good place to start.
No Truce With Kings 
[…] we’ve noted here more than once, the US tax code doesn’t tax the rich too lightly — it taxes the everyone else too […]