Openmind
Well-Known Member
I'm sure I could find a similar article from CATO.
Well, 6 quarters is not two years, but yes, it does come close.
More Heritage:
In 2000, the top 60 percent of taxpayers paid 100 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 40 percent collectively paid no income taxes. Lawmakers writing the 2001 tax cuts faced quite a challenge in giving the bulk of the income tax savings to a population that was already paying no income taxes.
Rather than exclude these Americans, lawmakers used the tax code to subsidize them. (Some economists would say this made that group's collective tax burden negative.)First, lawmakers lowered the initial tax brackets from 15 percent to 10 percent and then expanded the refundable child tax credit, which, along with the refundable earned income tax credit (EITC), reduced the typical low-income tax burden to well below zero. As a result, the U.S. Treasury now mails tax "refunds" to a large proportion of these Americans that exceed the amounts of tax that they actually paid. All in all, the number of tax filers with zero or negative income tax liability rose from 30 million to 40 million, or about 30 percent of all tax filers. The remaining 70 percent of tax filers received lower income tax rates, lower investment taxes, and lower estate taxes from the 2001 legislation.
Consequently, from 2000 to 2004, the share of all individual income taxes paid by the bottom 40 percent dropped from zero percent to –4 percent, meaning that the average family in those quintiles received a subsidy from the IRS. By contrast, the share paid by the top quintile of households (by income) increased from 81 percent to 85 percent.
Expanding the data to include all federal taxes, the share paid by the top quintile edged up from 66.6 percent in 2000 to 67.1 percent in 2004, while the bottom 40 percent's share dipped from 5.9 percent to 5.4 percent.
Are you claiming that the Bush Tax cuts caused the financial collapse?
The Bush tax cuts associated with his huge expenses (not budgeted!) on the war in Iraq and his deregulation for everyone of his friends certainly were a BIG part of the financial collapse! And the problem is that those decisions made under BUSH are STILL continuing to cost us a bundle today!
I know the bottom 40% don't pay tax (at least not Federal taxes!). Once again, you can't squeeze juice out of a dry turnip!. . .And. . . have you ever thought that, a large percentage of elderly, disabled AND veterans are a big part of those 40%? What do you want those people, living at or close to the poverty line to give up? Their morning cup of coffee? Their once a week meal at a fast food?
If you make $5 millions a year, what do you care if you pay 1.5 or 2 millions in tax? Would that keep you from taking your family to a nice restaurant or from going on vacation?
Well, even $40 a month less would be a catastrophy for people living in the bottom 40% of our population.
Would you rather not pay tax, even get a tiny bit of money back, and live with $15000 a year, or would you rather make $1 million a year and pay $300,000 in tax?
Guess what my choice is!