In the 1960s, the 400 richest Americans paid about 50% of their income in taxes across all levels of government. Today, they pay about 24%.
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Remember three things when we talk about US taxes.
- Most Americans pay three overlapping federal income taxes, two of which are not included on the April 15 return and are implicitly regressive (being paid on only the first 135,000 you make each year)
- sales taxes are also regressive, in that you only pay when you buy goods or services.
- the rich employ a whole industry to treat most of their wealth growth as “not income” so they dramatically minimize what they get taxed on
America has a pretend-progressive tax system, and it’s morally disgusting.
(Edited for markdown list; sorry)
Don’t forget how states try to bring people in by saying they have no income tax only to make it up off the backs of regular people with big sales or property taxes rather than actually taxing the wealthy.