Who Pays What In Taxes

We've put up a lot of charts and pictures this week.  I'm going to continue that trend by showing this graph which depicts percentage of income earned versus percentage of Federal taxes paid.  To show you how it works, the lowest 20% of income earners make between 0 and $18,104.  They also pay almost nothing in taxes.  The top four percent of wage earnings, those making in excess of $212,666 pay of 40% of all Federal taxes paid.  Two trends really jump off the page:

1.  Households comprising over 60% of the population pay less than 15% of the overall Federal taxes levied.

2.  Households comprising the top 20% of the population pay nearly 68% of the overall Federal taxes levied.

Remember that the next time you hear politicians saying that the "rich" don't pay their fair share of taxes.

That's all for these week.  I'll be back with some market thoughts and commentary Monday.

Source:  Income & Federal Tax Shares