Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007-the most recent data available-the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.
Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. In 2007, the bottom 95 percent paid 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. This is down from the 58 percent of the total income tax burden they paid twenty years ago.
To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.
Holy smokes! Those poor ultra-rich!
Of course, when you think about it for about 0.0004 seconds, it becomes abundantly clear what this means, especially when you consider the tax rate of the top earners has actually fallen in recent decades: there's income redistribution going on here...into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans:
For comparison, here's a chart showing the portion of adjusted gross income earned by the top 1 percent and by the bottom 95 percent. You'll see that one major reason why the share of taxes paid by the richest Americans has risen is that the richest Americans have experienced much greater income growth...
You'll also notice that the Tax Foundation chose a rather odd benchmark - 95 percent as opposed to 99 percent - to compare tax burdens with. That's because - as made clear in the Economix site - the missing earners actually pay quite a bit of taxes, too...because they're raking it in as much as the Top One Percenters.
Oh yeah. And all this data ignores the payroll tax.
