Great chart in the WSJ, extracted from the latest IRS data:
Provokes a couple of thoughts:
- There aren’t that many folks earning over $1 million annually … less than 250,000 out of 150 million tax filers.
- The reported thresholds are AGI – before taxes … number of folks in the categories r is even smaller after-taxes or if you income average across a few years
- Number has shrunk during the recession … what if they all go away, e.g. move or get their $millions taxed away or stop earning
- Earnings & wealth … even the WSJ doesn’t seem to understand the difference between stocks and flows – earnings is a ‘flow’, wealth is a ‘stock’ … millionaire status should be based on wealth not one’s year’s earnings
This issue doesn’t impact me as long as I’m making $8.75 an hour teaching … and, I have no great interest inprotecting the so-called super rich … but, I don’t like singling out a miniscule group of citizens for targeted “attention” … today it’s them, tomorrow, it’s us.
Bad precedent.
The Homa Files 
August 18, 2011 at 3:59 pm |
237,000 x $50,000 tax hike equals 12B in yearly revenue. Less, when you figure in avoidance strategies.
That is nothing. Without any view as to the merit of it, you probably can run a large western social welfare state (at least for two, three generations). But you can pay for it like we do, where the bottom 60-70% of filers pay essentially nothing. One thing we have achieved in totality is a very, very progressive income tax code.
It isn’t that the top 2% aren’t paying enough, it more like the three middle quintiles aren’t. Get 70M filers paying $10K via new incomes taxes and a VAT–> $700B in new revenues to pay.
237,000 people doesn’t move the needle- but 70M does.