August 2006 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: We need to talk about the "fair tax" again
That chart doesn't quite answer my question. I want to know what percent of the nation's income tax is paid by the people who earn 50% of the nation's income, 75% of the income, etc. So are the people who earn 50% of the income paying about 50% of the tax, or are they paying less or more? I've never seen a breakdown of those numbers.
I think the charts on this page might come closer to answering that, especially the 2 pie charts halfway down the page:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/currentdistribution.cfm?
Thanks! Those pie charts really answered my question. Looking at that, I'd say that honestly, I think the current system is pretty fair.
Those tax policy charts are probably what you're looking for but as far as I can tell they are 2008 estimates since the IRS hasn't released those numbers yet (obviously since 2008 is still going!).
Here's the numbers from 2006 (sorry couldn't find 2007):
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. The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $64,702) earned 68.2 percent of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.3 percent).
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
How is it fair that they pay a higher portion of tax revenues than their share of income?
See my post about McCain's Socialist Delusion. To be honest, I don't think I want a major shift in our current tax distribution, but I do think it needs to be simplified. And I'm not worried about a major change in the distribution of our tax burden under Obama because I don't think anybody is getting a tax cut anytime soon, what with 2 wars to fund and a giant bailout. Middle and lower class families must spend the vast majority, and sometimes all, on necessities. The upper 1% of income earners do not have to. As it stands, the people who make the majority of money pay the majority of income taxes.
Of course, I vote on a LOT more than tax policy. In fact, tax policy is kind of low on my list. I'm much more concerned about government intrusion into my body or home than I am about my wallet.
Ok but how is that "fair?" Those people are paying a greater share of taxes than their share of income. I don't see anything fair about that.
Again, I think the Real Clear Politics piece on McCain's socialist delusion does a good job of answering this. Making lower income groups pay taxes in exact proportion to the percentage of the country's income they receive would be crippling to them. It's part of being a collective society.
I didn't read that piece yet. I think this just comes to a fundamental difference on our views of the proper role of gov't.