Disguising your wealth overseas through South Dakota corporations is a favorite way to forego paying taxes.
Oh, yes, taxes.
Whenever it's mentioned we hear "Class Warfare!" - the Republican's favorite dog whistle
"Only the little people pay taxes" - Leona Hemsley (1920-1987), N.Y. Hotelier (Mrs. Helmsley, who became known as the “Queen of Mean” for mistreating her staff and served 19 months in jail for tax evasion.)
The Tax Burden for Low-Income Taxpayers
Only 1.4% of the $1.45 trillion in taxes paid in 2017 was contributed by taxpayers earning less than $30,000, according to the Pew Research Center.4
It should also be noted that many taxpayers in this income group
received income from the government in the form of those refundable tax credits—the IRS paid out about $62 million in earned income tax credits in 2020. The average payment to qualifying taxpayers was $2,461.6
The Tax Burden for Middle-Income Filers
A study by the Tax Foundation breaks down taxpayers into just two groups: the top 50% of earners and the bottom 50%. The lower half included taxpayers with AGIs of $41,740 or less in 2017. The Tax Foundation found that this lower 50% demographic contributed just 3% of taxes paid in 2017.1
The 2018 edition of the same study indicated that the bottom half of taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 3.7%. Those with AGIs falling between $50,000 and $100,000, which could be considered middle income, paid an effective rate of 9.25%. AGIs of $139,713 to $197,651 paid an average effective rate of 14%.7
The Tax Burden for High-Income Taxpayers
Wealthy individuals do indeed pay more in taxes than low-income or even middle-income individuals. It's just basic math.
Even if the tax system were
not progressive and everyone paid the same percentage of their incomes, 15% of $30,000 is a great deal less than 15% of $300,000. But we do have a progressive system, so high-income individuals pay higher effective tax rates, even after all those tax credits and deductions are taken into consideration. Those deductions won’t reduce $300,000 to $30,000.
The Pew Research Center indicates that taxpayers with AGIs in excess of $200,000 paid more than half of all taxes collected in 2015—58.9%, to be exact.4
Those with incomes over $2 million paid a 27.5% effective tax rate, triple that of taxpayers who earned less than six figures annually, although the effective rate drops to 25.9% for the super-wealthy who earned $10 million a year or more.4
The Tax Foundation’s study concluded that 96.9% of all 2017 income taxes were paid by the higher-earning 50% of taxpayers.1
The Pew Research Center study indicates that taxpayers earning between $200,000 and $500,000 annually paid an effective tax rate of 19.4% in 2015. Their income taxes represented 20.6% of the total taken in by the IRS. This decreased to 17.9% of the total taxes paid at an effective tax rate of 26.8% for those with incomes between $500,000 and $2 million.4
Almost all countries have progressive income tax, including the DR.
www.ntu.org
