Look Who's Paying the Tax Bill
from Texas Eagle Forum TORCH

Over the past decade or so, fewer and fewer Americans have been paying income taxes and fewer still a significant percentage of income in taxes. Those being squeezed are the nation's top earners.

* In 1999, Americans with incomes above half a million dollars constituted 0.5% of taxpayers but accounted for 28% of total tax revenue.
* That means that only 553,380 taxpayers were responsible for more than one-quarter of the total income tax take of $877 billion.
* In 2000, people with adjusted gross incomes of $128,336 or higher were responsible for 56% of tax take.
* The top 50% of taxpayers coughed up 96% of the total tax take that year.

Compare that with the situation 14 years earlier.

* In 1986, the top 1% paid 26% of revenue, the top 5% was responsible for 42% and the top half contributed 93%.
* The bottom half of taxpayers accounted for 7% of the total in 1986.but only 4% in 2000.

Almost 13% of all workers have no tax liability at all.and another 16.5 million have some income but don't file at all. This complicated system of progressivity and escape hatches is creating a nation of two different taxpaying classes: those who pay a lot and those
who pay very little.

And as fewer and fewer people are responsible for paying more and more of all taxes, the constituency for tax cutting, much less for tax reform, is eroding.