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1. 
   Jeff Carlson said: On January 4, 2013 at 7:48 PM

   Mr. McCrady seems to think the top earners in this country do not pay a “fair percentage” in taxes. Well let’s check the numbers.

   Here are some facts from Stephen Moore, who wrote “The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays?” in August 2012. Moore’s study illustrates how the income tax share paid by the richest 1 percent of income-earners has risen while the top marginal income tax rate has fallen. The tax rate has fallen from 70 percent in 1970 to 35 percent in 2006. Meanwhile, during the same period, the percent of taxes paid by the top 1 percent of earners rose from 16 percent to 40 percent. The top 1% earned 22% of National Income and paid 40% of the Federal Income Tax. The top 10% earned 48% of National Income and paid 71% of Federal Income Tax.

   What standard of fairness dictates that the top 10 percent of income earners pay 71 percent of the federal income tax burden while 47 percent of Americans pay absolutely nothing?

   McCrady says the top 1% “have police, firemen, the armed services protecting them, their products, their families (entitled to the best health care), etc.? Someone taking care of the airports, roads and bridges that protect them, their families, and their products, places of business, etc.” We ALL benefit from those things, and the wealthy pay a much bigger share of the cost of those things than the rest of us do.

   Mr. McCrady should be made aware that in the USA, rich Americans pay a larger share of their income in taxes than the richest Europeans do. The U.S. tax system already punishes the wealthy more than any other industrialized nation. In fact, the very rich pay far more in taxes than the relatively low nominal numbers they report on their tax returns. Many very wealthy people obtain most of their income from dividends, capital gains and interest on tax-free state and municipal bonds. The actual tax rate most wealthy people pay on dividends, when correctly calculated, is about 52 percent, as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the federal and state corporate-level-profits tax burden, plus federal and state taxes on dividends.

   McCrady complains that the rich get richer….but a large share of income reported by the upper 1% is largely a consequence of lower tax rates. Lower tax rates result in higher reported earnings, while higher rates can result in lower reported earnings. In other words, higher tax rates have the predictable result of causing earners to work and make less, thus actually bringing in less revenue to the government.

   Here are the sources of my comments:

   http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/i_will_pay_my_fair_share_of_taxes_when.html

   http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/the_rich_taxes_paid_polls_and_reality.html

   http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/mythbusting_the_rich_dont_pay.html

   http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/barack_and_joe_taxation.html

   http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/graph_of_the_day_for_january_1_3.html

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