Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Capatalism, Socalism, Patriotism and the Top 1%

Why is it when the tax codes redistributes the wealth to the richest Americans we call it Capitalism or Patriotism but when we look at making it a level playing field it becomes Socialism?

In a report by the IRS on taxes paid in 2007 they found that the 400 best-off taxpayers (the top 10th of the top 1%) paid an average tax rate of 16.6%, which puts them just slightly above the second lowest tax rate for that year. This means according to their tax return they only made around $35,000.

To make the top 400, a taxpayer had to have income of more than $138.8 million. As a group, the top 400 reported $137.9 billion in income, and paid $22.9 billion in federal income taxes.

About 81.3% of the income of the top 400 households came in the form of capital gains, dividends or interest, the IRS data show. Only 6.5% came in the form of salaries and wages.

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