Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I, VT) says the rich should pay more taxes than they do already and that if only they paid “their fair share” Party’s socialist dream programs could all be paid for. He repeated that demand on last Monday’s Town Hall with Fox News.
On the other hand.
According to data released recently by the Internal Revenue Service, compiled by the Tax Foundation, the bottom 50% of taxpayers paid about $43.9 billion in income taxes 2016—which accounts for roughly 3% of all income taxes paid.
The top 1%—Bernie’s second favorite target, at that Town Hall and everywhere else he speaks—pay
37.3% of all income taxes paid during the same year
That works out to $545.8 billion.
Those are dollars. Here are the tax rates actually paid by those two groups.
the top 1% paid at a 26.9% individual income tax rate
the bottom 50% paid at a 3.7% rate
The rap on President Donald Trump’s and the Republican Party’s tax reform is that it gave the bulk of the tax cut to those Evil 1%.
Well, duh. The reform’s tax cut here was an across the board reduction in rate and a consolidation of brackets, so that all taxpayers got essentially the same reduction in rates—with many middle-class taxpayers getting pushed into a lower bracket for an even greater reduction in rate. However, those 1%-ers remain in the highest tax bracket, they still pay the most, by far, dollar amount—and so of course they saw the largest dollar reduction.
Beyond that, the personal income tax rate reduction is only temporary, and if the rates and brackets revert to their previous levels, it’ll be the middle-class that’s hardest hit. Nevertheless, Progressive-Democrats in Congress refuse to allow the personal tax reductions to become permanent so they can have a talking point about their own second favorite target for the 2020 elections.
From that, it’s only natural that Sanders and his Progressive-Democrat cronies constantly avoid (refuse?) saying how much is “fair share,” just that it’s more, more, more, gimme, gimme.
Progressive-Democrats are the modern epitome of an 19th century railroad magnate:
Anything that ain’t nailed down is mine, and if I can pry it loose, it ain’t nailed down.