The newest data released by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress is really quite enlightening. Firstly, the top 1% of the nation's wage earners paid in 34.3% of the total taxes paid. The top 5% paid in 54.4%; the top 10% paid in 65.8%; the top 25% paid in 83.9% and the top 50% of the nation's wage-earners paid in 96.5% of the total taxes. The bottom 50%, however, paid in only 3.5%. To have made the grade and be counted amongst the nation's top 1% of wage earners, one had to have an adjusted gross income of $295,495 [Ed. Note: We need to make clear that these figures are all from taxable 2003, and that is in fact that most recent year for which the data is fully available.]. To have made the top 10%, one's adjusted gross income had to be $94,891. The cut off to make the top half was $29,019.
In '01, the top 50% paid in 96.0% of the total taxes. In '02, they paid in 96.5%, and the 96.5% again last year as noted just above. The bottom 50% paid in 3.97% of the total taxes in '01; 3.5% in '02 and the same 3.5% (rounded to the nearest 0.1%) in '03. We note that '99, according this time to the Tax Foundation, the top 1% of the nation's wage earners paid in an even greater portion of the total taxes: 36.2%. The top half of the nation's wage-earners then paid in 96% of the total tax revenues earned by the government, while the bottom half paid in 4%. So since '99, the top 1% are paying a bit less, but so too is the bottom 50%; the remaining 49% are paying more. Oh, and to have made the top 1% of all wage earners in '99 one had to have an adjusted gross income of "only" $293,415. The bottom 50% had an AGI of $26, 415.
Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will Favorite posts | Manifold podcast | Twitter: @hsu_steve
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Taxes and inequality
I don't have a link for the following data, it came in an investment advisory called the Gartman Letter. You can read this data in two ways: as an indication of the extreme concentration of wealth and income in the US, or (if you like Ayn Rand) as an indication of how a small fraction of the population produces most of the value for society :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2006
(154)
-
▼
11
(16)
- Shanghai from an Indian perspective
- Virtual millionaires
- QuantLogic
- A reallocation of human capital
- Hedge fund singularity
- A New Class War
- Mouth bets
- Fault lines in Russia's Far East
- 1991 Honda Civic, 50k miles
- The ugly truth
- No way out
- Hedge fund clones
- Neanderthal-human interbreeding
- Chat with Lisa Randall
- Taxes and inequality
- It's cold here
-
▼
11
(16)
Labels
- physics (420)
- genetics (325)
- globalization (301)
- genomics (295)
- technology (282)
- brainpower (280)
- finance (275)
- american society (261)
- China (249)
- innovation (231)
- ai (206)
- economics (202)
- psychometrics (190)
- science (172)
- psychology (169)
- machine learning (166)
- biology (163)
- photos (162)
- genetic engineering (150)
- universities (150)
- travel (144)
- podcasts (143)
- higher education (141)
- startups (139)
- human capital (127)
- geopolitics (124)
- credit crisis (115)
- political correctness (108)
- iq (107)
- quantum mechanics (107)
- cognitive science (103)
- autobiographical (97)
- politics (93)
- careers (90)
- bounded rationality (88)
- social science (86)
- history of science (85)
- realpolitik (85)
- statistics (83)
- elitism (81)
- talks (80)
- evolution (79)
- credit crunch (78)
- biotech (76)
- genius (76)
- gilded age (73)
- income inequality (73)
- caltech (68)
- books (64)
- academia (62)
- history (61)
- intellectual history (61)
- MSU (60)
- sci fi (60)
- harvard (58)
- silicon valley (58)
- mma (57)
- mathematics (55)
- education (53)
- video (52)
- kids (51)
- bgi (48)
- black holes (48)
- cdo (45)
- derivatives (43)
- neuroscience (43)
- affirmative action (42)
- behavioral economics (42)
- economic history (42)
- literature (42)
- nuclear weapons (42)
- computing (41)
- jiujitsu (41)
- physical training (40)
- film (39)
- many worlds (39)
- quantum field theory (39)
- expert prediction (37)
- ufc (37)
- bjj (36)
- bubbles (36)
- mortgages (36)
- google (35)
- race relations (35)
- hedge funds (34)
- security (34)
- von Neumann (34)
- meritocracy (31)
- feynman (30)
- quants (30)
- taiwan (30)
- efficient markets (29)
- foo camp (29)
- movies (29)
- sports (29)
- music (28)
- singularity (27)
- entrepreneurs (26)
- conferences (25)
- housing (25)
- obama (25)
- subprime (25)
- venture capital (25)
- berkeley (24)
- epidemics (24)
- war (24)
- wall street (23)
- athletics (22)
- russia (22)
- ultimate fighting (22)
- cds (20)
- internet (20)
- new yorker (20)
- blogging (19)
- japan (19)
- scifoo (19)
- christmas (18)
- dna (18)
- gender (18)
- goldman sachs (18)
- university of oregon (18)
- cold war (17)
- cryptography (17)
- freeman dyson (17)
- smpy (17)
- treasury bailout (17)
- algorithms (16)
- autism (16)
- personality (16)
- privacy (16)
- Fermi problems (15)
- cosmology (15)
- happiness (15)
- height (15)
- india (15)
- oppenheimer (15)
- probability (15)
- social networks (15)
- wwii (15)
- fitness (14)
- government (14)
- les grandes ecoles (14)
- neanderthals (14)
- quantum computers (14)
- blade runner (13)
- chess (13)
- hedonic treadmill (13)
- nsa (13)
- philosophy of mind (13)
- research (13)
- aspergers (12)
- climate change (12)
- harvard society of fellows (12)
- malcolm gladwell (12)
- net worth (12)
- nobel prize (12)
- pseudoscience (12)
- Einstein (11)
- art (11)
- democracy (11)
- entropy (11)
- geeks (11)
- string theory (11)
- television (11)
- Go (10)
- ability (10)
- complexity (10)
- dating (10)
- energy (10)
- football (10)
- france (10)
- italy (10)
- mutants (10)
- nerds (10)
- olympics (10)
- pop culture (10)
- crossfit (9)
- encryption (9)
- eugene (9)
- flynn effect (9)
- james salter (9)
- simulation (9)
- tail risk (9)
- turing test (9)
- alan turing (8)
- alpha (8)
- ashkenazim (8)
- data mining (8)
- determinism (8)
- environmentalism (8)
- games (8)
- keynes (8)
- manhattan (8)
- new york times (8)
- pca (8)
- philip k. dick (8)
- qcd (8)
- real estate (8)
- robot genius (8)
- success (8)
- usain bolt (8)
- Iran (7)
- aig (7)
- basketball (7)
- free will (7)
- fx (7)
- game theory (7)
- hugh everett (7)
- inequality (7)
- information theory (7)
- iraq war (7)
- markets (7)
- paris (7)
- patents (7)
- poker (7)
- teaching (7)
- vietnam war (7)
- volatility (7)
- anthropic principle (6)
- bayes (6)
- class (6)
- drones (6)
- econtalk (6)
- empire (6)
- global warming (6)
- godel (6)
- intellectual property (6)
- nassim taleb (6)
- noam chomsky (6)
- prostitution (6)
- rationality (6)
- academia sinica (5)
- bobby fischer (5)
- demographics (5)
- fake alpha (5)
- kasparov (5)
- luck (5)
- nonlinearity (5)
- perimeter institute (5)
- renaissance technologies (5)
- sad but true (5)
- software development (5)
- solar energy (5)
- warren buffet (5)
- 100m (4)
- Poincare (4)
- assortative mating (4)
- bill gates (4)
- borges (4)
- cambridge uk (4)
- censorship (4)
- charles darwin (4)
- computers (4)
- creativity (4)
- hormones (4)
- humor (4)
- judo (4)
- kerviel (4)
- microsoft (4)
- mixed martial arts (4)
- monsters (4)
- moore's law (4)
- soros (4)
- supercomputers (4)
- trento (4)
- 200m (3)
- babies (3)
- brain drain (3)
- charlie munger (3)
- cheng ting hsu (3)
- chet baker (3)
- correlation (3)
- ecosystems (3)
- equity risk premium (3)
- facebook (3)
- fannie (3)
- feminism (3)
- fst (3)
- intellectual ventures (3)
- jim simons (3)
- language (3)
- lee kwan yew (3)
- lewontin fallacy (3)
- lhc (3)
- magic (3)
- michael lewis (3)
- mit (3)
- nathan myhrvold (3)
- neal stephenson (3)
- olympiads (3)
- path integrals (3)
- risk preference (3)
- search (3)
- sec (3)
- sivs (3)
- society generale (3)
- systemic risk (3)
- thailand (3)
- twitter (3)
- alibaba (2)
- bear stearns (2)
- bruce springsteen (2)
- charles babbage (2)
- cloning (2)
- david mamet (2)
- digital books (2)
- donald mackenzie (2)
- drugs (2)
- dune (2)
- exchange rates (2)
- frauds (2)
- freddie (2)
- gaussian copula (2)
- heinlein (2)
- industrial revolution (2)
- james watson (2)
- ltcm (2)
- mating (2)
- mba (2)
- mccain (2)
- monkeys (2)
- national character (2)
- nicholas metropolis (2)
- no holds barred (2)
- offices (2)
- oligarchs (2)
- palin (2)
- population structure (2)
- prisoner's dilemma (2)
- singapore (2)
- skidelsky (2)
- socgen (2)
- sprints (2)
- star wars (2)
- ussr (2)
- variance (2)
- virtual reality (2)
- war nerd (2)
- abx (1)
- anathem (1)
- andrew lo (1)
- antikythera mechanism (1)
- athens (1)
- atlas shrugged (1)
- ayn rand (1)
- bay area (1)
- beats (1)
- book search (1)
- bunnie huang (1)
- car dealers (1)
- carlos slim (1)
- catastrophe bonds (1)
- cdos (1)
- ces 2008 (1)
- chance (1)
- children (1)
- cochran-harpending (1)
- cpi (1)
- david x. li (1)
- dick cavett (1)
- dolomites (1)
- eharmony (1)
- eliot spitzer (1)
- escorts (1)
- faces (1)
- fads (1)
- favorite posts (1)
- fiber optic cable (1)
- francis crick (1)
- gary brecher (1)
- gizmos (1)
- greece (1)
- greenspan (1)
- hypocrisy (1)
- igon value (1)
- iit (1)
- inflation (1)
- information asymmetry (1)
- iphone (1)
- jack kerouac (1)
- jaynes (1)
- jazz (1)
- jfk (1)
- john dolan (1)
- john kerry (1)
- john paulson (1)
- john searle (1)
- john tierney (1)
- jonathan littell (1)
- las vegas (1)
- lawyers (1)
- lehman auction (1)
- les bienveillantes (1)
- lowell wood (1)
- lse (1)
- machine (1)
- mcgeorge bundy (1)
- mexico (1)
- michael jackson (1)
- mickey rourke (1)
- migration (1)
- money:tech (1)
- myron scholes (1)
- netwon institute (1)
- networks (1)
- newton institute (1)
- nfl (1)
- oliver stone (1)
- phil gramm (1)
- philanthropy (1)
- philip greenspun (1)
- portfolio theory (1)
- power laws (1)
- pyschology (1)
- randomness (1)
- recession (1)
- sales (1)
- skype (1)
- standard deviation (1)
- starship troopers (1)
- students today (1)
- teleportation (1)
- tierney lab blog (1)
- tomonaga (1)
- tyler cowen (1)
- venice (1)
- violence (1)
- virtual meetings (1)
- wealth effect (1)
2 comments:
Don't have time to double-check now, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen this breakdown before, and that it's for Federal income tax only, and therefore quite misleading as to how the overall tax burden distributes. Since Federal income tax collections total only about $1 trillion but Federal expenditures exceed $2 trillion, they are less than half the tax burden.
Mere inclusion of regressive taxes such as Social Security, excise taxes, etc. substantially changes the picture.
Since the true level of taxation is the level of government expenditures, not that of nominal "tax collections", a full analysis of tax burden distribution would need to include an analysis of how the distribution is affected by the various forms of "non-tax taxation".
jm
(posting as 'anonymous' only because Blogger prevents me from using 'jm')
See below for breakdown of individual, corporate, SS tax components:
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10004879.shtml
Not sure how re- or pro-gressive the goods and services taxes are. But you are right that the total tax burden isn't quite the same as represented in the post.
Post a Comment