Josh Barro: “People will point at the burden of one specific tax — like Sen. Rick Scott complaining about the large fraction of Americans who don’t pay federal personal income tax — and use that observation to make a claim about how fair the whole tax system is.”
“Federal personal income tax only makes up about 30% of all the taxes collected by federal, state and local governments in the US. So, if you want to assess whether the overall system tax system is fair, you have to place that tax in context with all the other taxes that provide the remaining 70% of the tax revenue.”
“People in the bottom income quintile (that is, with household incomes less than $26,000) pay about 15% of their income in taxes, mostly to state and local governments. The largest chunk of that tax burden comes from sales taxes. People in the top 1% pay closer to 36% of their incomes in tax, with by far the largest component being federal personal income tax.”
