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johnsobas said: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808.html "In 1958, the top 3% of taxpayers earned 14.7% of all adjusted gross income and paid 29.2% of all federal income taxes. In 2010, the top 3% earned 27.2% of adjusted gross income and their share of all federal taxes rose proportionally, to 51%." |
I'm sorry, but that's *proportion* of federal taxes. We're talking total taxes. Furthermore, the top 3% of taxpayers includes a large bloc of people who don't fall into the top tax bracket, making it a very coarse comparison.
Let me make this point for you. If you have two people, and one pays $10 and the other pays $20, then the second person is paying just under 67% of the total amount paid. If one now pays $20 and the other pays $40, the percentage of total hasn't changed... but the amount being paid has doubled.
Here's a graph, from Wikipedia, of average net tax rate paid by the top 0.1% and 0.01%:
As you can see, in the 1950s it was significantly higher than in the 2000s. Here's a graph of all marginal tax rates in 1958 and 2009:
As you can see, there were more tax brackets in 1958 going up to a much higher taxable income (adjusted to 2009 dollars). At the same time, income for the top earners was lower, on average. As a result, a lower apparent tax rate occurs than would otherwise happen - this is why, in 1958, even the top 0.01% of earners were only paying, on average, less than 50% in tax.
