Comment by giantg2
4 hours ago
Do you have the data for that? I was wondering about tax paid (as dollars not effective rate- I know effective tends to me lower for HNW individuals due to accountants and other financial professionals they can afford).
> I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes.
If we're bringing receipts, how about you start? Do you have the data for this initial statement of yours?
Here is one source (with 2022 data):
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
...of course that doesn't include payroll taxes (Social Security).
And for reference, here's what kind of incomes those percentiles are:
Top 50%: $53k/year
Top 25%: $93k/year
Top 10%: $155k/year
Top 5%: $210k/year
Top 1%: $450k/year
Please delete this comment before it bankrupts half of click-bait driven media outlets.
Focusing on a single tax is silly. We should look at all taxes paid across all levels of government. Federal income tax is one of the most progressive taxes out there, so of course that's what people focus on when they want to make the point that wealthy people are being sacrificed to the altar of taxation.
If you look at all taxes, the share paid is remarkably close to the share earned. According to https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2024/, in 2024, the top 1% earned 20.1% of income while paying 23.9% of taxes. The bottom 20% paid 1.5% of taxes while earning 2.6% of income.
2 replies →
This is close enough (posted here by another).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48185123