But Virginia, i have a question for you.
Of course she cited the well known Republican myth that the rich pay more taxes than everyone else. I attempted to bust this myth, explaining that the reason the
upper middle/lower wealthy classes pay high taxes is because the really rich are
paying very little (or nothing at all) in taxes and that corporations are evading their dues altogether.
If you believe that the wealthy should pay a larger percentage of taxes, shouldn’t you argue for the system of taxation that is most effective in achieving that goal? Here are two tables from a NRO article that come from the Congressional Budget Office. And, for the record, I went through and checked all the numbers, they are right. Aviod the temptation to dismiss my post because i cite a conservative magazine and just focus on the numbers from the CBO. The first column comes from the 2004 Income Category in Table 3 (2000 law) under “Effective Individual Income Tax Rate” (p. 19) and the third comes from the 2004 Income Category in Table 4 (current law) under “Change in Effective Individual Income Tax Rate” (p. 20) and the middle column is extrapolated by adding the first column to the third (2000 law + difference b/t 2000 Law and 2004 law = 2004 law).
So as many other people love to point out, Bush’s tax cuts give the wealthiest 1% the largest tax break. This point cannot be argued. But look at how the tax cuts effect the tax-burden, which is what we really care about. The data for the first column comes from the 2004 income category in Table 3 (2000 Law) under “Share of Individual Income Tax Liabilities” (p. 20) and the third column comes from table 4 (current law) under “Change in Share of Individual Income tax Liabilities” (p. 21). Again, the second column in the table below is extrapolated from the other two.
Now, I am not making a normative judgment on the tax cuts all, all I am saying is this: If you support, and more importantly, want a system of taxation that is proportionally supported more by the wealthy then by the poor, then what is your argument against the tax cuts for Effective Income Tax (all the other tax cuts aside) seeing how it increased the share of taxes paid by the Top Quintile by 3.8% and decreased it for all other groups?