Tax Day Stats
posted by Frank Pasquale
A few stats & stories in honor of Tax Day:
A. This “could be the best tax day for rich since ’30s:”
17% . . . was the effective tax rate paid by the 400 Americans with the highest adjusted gross income in 2007, the most recent year with IRS data available. The figure is down from almost 30 percent in 2005. [W]ith top rates on ordinary income, capital gains, dividends, estates and gifts at or near historic lows,” [this year could be even better].
B. A tax loophole for the top 25 hedge funders is worth about 120,000 teachers’ salaries.
C. The favorite shelters and dodges of America’s wealthiest.
D. Journalist states that “”Tax havens have grown so fast in the era of globalization, since the 1970s, that they are now right at the heart of the global economy.”
E. David Cay Johnston states that, “during seven of the eight George W. Bush years, the IRS report on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret.” Johnston also notes that, “When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont.”
F. Joshua Holland compares changes in the tax burden over time:
The federal income tax bill for a person making $15,000 is 51 percent higher today than it was 30 years ago — a big jump. . . . If you brought in a half-million dollars, your tab would have dropped by 49.5 percent, saving you around $150,000. It’s about the same decrease for someone making a cool million.
G. A Top 10 tax facts list from Demos (here are the first three items):
1. The government collected less in taxes in 2010 than it has in over three generations, and tax rates are at historic lows.
2. The Bush tax cuts added $1.7 trillion to the nation’s debt over 2001-2008, which is more than it would cost to send 24 million kids to four-year public universities.
3. Corporate income taxes totaled about 1 percent of GDP this year, 60% lower than 40 years ago.
And finally, a link to a group concerned by all this, US Uncut.
Image Credit: Sterin, photograph of Do Ho Suh’s installation Floor. Floor was featured in this week’s Financial Times’s How to Spend It magazine, which sympathetically explored the challenges collectors face as they seek to display installation art. More on money & the art world here.
April 16, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Posted in: Law and Inequality, Tax
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Responses (2)
Frank Pasquale - April 18, 2011 at 10:25 pm
More inequality stats here:
http://www.demos.org/inequality/numbers.cfm
Joseph Slater - April 19, 2011 at 8:31 am
Good stuff, Frank.
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