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 :-)

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.