45% of households owe no federal income tax for 2010

[steveox]

The fastest way to make the tax-averse incensed is to tell them that nearly half of U.S. households end up owing no federal income tax when all is said and done.

But like most statistics, it is often misunderstood -- and, in the case of those trying to stir political outrage, misrepresented.

For tax year 2010, roughly 45% of households, or about 69 million, will end up owing nothing in federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Some in that group will even end up getting paid money from the federal government.

That does not mean such households end up paying no taxes whatsoever. For instance, those in the group still pay other taxes such as state and local income taxes, as well as property and sales taxes.

And the group doesn't necessarily get off scot-free when it comes to payroll taxes -- which support Social Security and Medicare.

More than two-thirds -- or 49 million of the 69 million households -- pay payroll tax. Of those, 34 million end up paying more in payroll taxes than they get back on their federal return. The other 15 million pay payroll tax but they get enough refundable credits to offset what they paid. (Get a 'receipt' for your taxes)

Contrary to what many assume, membership in the group isn't restricted to the poor.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/45-of...65.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode

Discuss!

 

[BigRob]

Interesting Wall Street Journal article on tax issues:

Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)

In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016, as the costs of those entitlements are expected to grow rapidly. The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.

So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks.

This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it.

 

[Dr.Who]

I was in that group who paid no federal income taxes, but only during the Bush years. Before that I paid taxes and since Obama took over I paid taxes.

So much for that website that estimated how my tax burden would go down under the new Obama tax code.

How many of you visited one of those websites and then had your tax go up rather than down?