Happy Tax Day to the OTers! Just some quick reminders:
- Most Americans have no clue how the tax code even works. Is that because the tax code is too complicated, or because Americans are dumb? Yes. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/national-tax-literacy-poll-education/
- What is your definition of "fair share"? According to IRS Data from 2021:
- Half of taxpayers paid 97.7% of all federal income taxes
- The top 1% pay 45.8% of taxes
- The top 5% pay 65.7% of all taxes
- The bottom 50% of earners pay 2.3% of all taxes
- The TCJA reduced average tax rates across all income groups.
- Link for the above two bullets: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/
- Any time you hear about the teacher or firefighter paying a higher tax rate than the millionaire and billionaire, that's just not true. The only time you can get to that is when you take into account unrealized taxable gains (which is unconstitutional under our tax code, and is horrible tax policy as many countries have learned). Even still, those gains are taxed when realized (i.e. stock sold). Yes, there is some fudging the numbers and some doesn't get taxed through inheritance, but the argument is not a genuine one.
- Even though federal tax receipts remains around the same amount of GDP since WW2, regardless of the highest tax rate, (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S), the federal debt continues to climb and the surplus/deficit remains negative other than a blip in the 90's (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S).
