Richest Americans Paying Largest Share Of Taxes Ever

• July 19, 2008

So much for all those Bush “tax cuts for the rich” the liberals are always on about.

In 2006, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 39.9 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 22.1 percent of adjusted gross income, both of which are significantly higher than 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes. In 1990, those figures were 14 percent and 25.1 percent, respectively.

Barack Obama is one Democrat who has been engaging in some campaign rhetoric about “tax cuts for the rich.” Here’s an example from a speech Obama gave to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia (video at the link):

Over the last seven years, we’ve had an administration that serves the interests of the wealthy and the well-connected, no matter what the cost to working families, and to our economy. It’s an administration that didn’t lift a finger while our economy rolled toward recession until the pain folks were feeling on Main Street trickled up to their friends on Wall Street.
It’s an administration that’s been handing out tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans who don’t need them and aren’t even asking for them.
And it’s an administration that denies labor a seat at the table when trade deals are being negotiated, that doesn’t believe in unions, that doesn’t believe in organizing, and that’s packed the labor relations board with their corporate buddies.
Now, John McCain said a few weeks ago that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should” – and that’s clear since all he’s offering is more of the same Bush policies that have put the American Dream out of reach for so many Americans.
Like George Bush, Senator McCain is committed to more tax cuts for the rich, and more trade agreements that fail to protect American workers. His response to the housing crisis amounts to little more than watching millions of Americans face foreclosure. And some of his top advisors were lobbyists for the special interest when they went to work for his campaign, so it’s not hard to guess who they’ll be working for if they get into the White House.

The problem with all this is that President Bush didn’t give tax relief to the rich. The richest Americans are paying more in taxes than ever before.
Now, personally, I don’t think it’s a good thing to keep amassing most of this country’s tax burden onto the shoulders of the wealthiest Americans, but for anyone to say that those Americans got a tax break during the Bush administration is an outright liar.
One has to wonder why our media, which is allegedly committed to truth and objectivity, don’t call Obama and other Democrats out on this particular lie they’ve been perpetuating for years.

Tags: Asshats, Domestic Issues, Politics, The Loony Left

http://Array andydakota

What Adam Smith said: “This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

And from Andrew Mellon:

The fairness of taxing more lightly income from wages, salaries or from investments is beyond question. In the first case, the income is uncertain and limited in duration; sickness or death destroys it and old age diminishes it; in the other, the source of income continues; the income may be disposed of during a man’s life and it descends to his heirs. Surely we can afford to make a distinction between the people whose only capital is their mental and physical energy and the people whose income is derived from investments. Such a distinction would mean much to millions of American workers and would be an added inspriration to the man who must provide a competence during his few productive years to care for himself and his family when his earnings capacity is at an end.

(Andrew Mellon, Taxation: The People’s Business, 1924)

Just another perspective.
robert108

What you overlook is that the very rich are different in that they can afford top notch accountants,
investment advisers, and lawyers.

Yes, they provide work for many people, and pay the lion’s share of taxes as well.
Nunez

Now, I’m not going to get indepth on this matter. As a person in the 1% which pays a lot in taxes, I’m not in a position to whine since I’m able to buy what I want, when I want and not have to worry about health insurance and the next meal.

Now, I agree with Warren Buffet on this matter. I’m not a Democrat that wants to increase taxes. I would love to reach a point in this country where we didn’t squander the tax money and were flush with a surplus to a point where we could lower taxes to low rates.
robert108

Lefties don’t care about the actual numbers; like all good Marxists, they continually play the class envy card, because their god, Marx told them that everything is determined by class struggle.
Hoss

Nunez,
Not picking, but you do realize that a liberal from Adam Smith’s era was for free markets and economic individualism, don’t you (before the left totally bastardized the meaning). It’s like how you call a fat guy Slim. And when Smith talks of equity, he’s also framing the term as a shared sacrifice for all: that doesn’t mean the “rich” pay all the taxes, but that everyone should pay an equitable share (unlike Keynes).

I’m with you on the squandering, but I think that ship has sailed. Too much government, too many earmarks, and too much turf to protect from tightening the belt.
Nunez

Rob,

Adam Smith would not be a supporter of the modern tax code.

I didn’t know you had a direct line to him. Tell him I said Hi!

From 1924, from a populist.

Labeling people is simply a way to get around having to provide a logical argument.

…Moving on…

The proud liberal Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations: “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.”
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

Just another perspective.

The envious left field perspective.
http://www.dartemis.net/blog/ sayanything-42

Thurston opines:

So, the Bush Tax cuts didn’t have their intended results? Who would have thought it?

Only the innumerate. The tax rate cuts were intended to stimulate the economy and reduce incentives to shelter income. Demonstrably, both were achieved.

I guess we should go back to the Clinton Tax policies so the rich don’t have to carry such a burden.

Spoken like a true new left man: “That didn’t work, let’s try it some MORE.”
http://ndgoon.blogspot.com/ goon

In 2006, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 39.9 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 22.1 percent of adjusted gross income, both of which are significantly higher than 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes. In 1990, those figures were 14 percent and 25.1 percent, respectively.

I guess the rich aren’t paying enought taxes for BHO.
Look for the tax rate to really hurt if BHO and the left take over. They are going to really lay it on the rich.
My only question is what do they consider rich?
robert108

FYI: Adam Smith was only a “liberal” in the old sense of the word, which now describes what are called “conservatives”. The “liberals” of today are actually strong central govt leftie fascists. Adam Smith was describing the horrible class stratification of the monarchial system, which featured peasants and nobility, with very little upward mobility. Check the date on “Wealth of Nations”. There was no Marxist “class struggle” bullshit going on at that time.
robert108

…and were flush with a surplus to a
point where we could lower taxes to low rates.

A “surplus” means the govt took more than even it could spend. It simply means overtaxation. You have it backward; the govt should have to justify every penny before it should be permitted to take anything from the citizens.
http://www.dartemis.net/blog/ sayanything-42

Rob,

Nice you see you catch up on this story.

And I must take you to task as well. Those top rate earners did indeed receive a reduction in their rate of taxation. What you overlook is that the very rich are different in that they can afford top notch accountants, investment advisers, and lawyers. When the tax rate becomes confiscatory, they have the means of sheltering their earnings such that the amount they have to report is reduced.

Reducing the rate of taxation such that it is not confiscatory allows the higher income brackets to retain sufficient of their earnings without need of tax shelters.

And at this point, something like the bottom quarter of earners (possibly as much as the bottom third, based on AGI) pay no federal income taxes whatsoever. If the Democrats raise the rate on the top earners again, tax shelters will once again become attractive, and the tax burden will once again shift down onto the middle and lower quintiles of income.
http://proof-proofpositive.blogspot.com/ proof_positive

It’s an administration that’s been handing out tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans

It’s like our friend Buzz and his imaginary Bush vetoes…don’t confuse Liberals with the facts! They have a hard enough time processing reality!
http://www.littlerockappetite.com/ Thurston

So, the Bush Tax cuts didn’t have their intended results? Who would have thought it?

I guess we should go back to the Clinton Tax policies so the rich don’t have to carry such a burden.
robert108

Just another perspective.

From 1924, from a populist.
WOOFX

There was plenty of class struggle going on in Smith’s time, the 18th century.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Worshiping the rich is not the same as thinking they shouldn’t be the victims of exorbitant, confiscatory taxation.

Way to try and quote someone smarter than you out of context to make your point. Adam Smith would not be a supporter of the modern tax code.

SayAnythingBlog.com

Richest Americans Paying Largest Share Of Taxes Ever

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