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ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

The main issue I have with Carolla's analysis is that it seems to be predicated upon both inaccurate and deceptive numbers.

He cites early on in his speech that he heard the top 1% of income earners pay over 50% of all income taxes. This number is false. According to the IRS, the top 1% in 2009 paid about 37% of all income taxes.

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ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

Bear in mind that the 24% is the effective tax rate, not the marginal rate. That, for the top 1%, is 35%

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ORIGINAL: LVnewDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

The main issue I have with Carolla's analysis is that it seems to be predicated upon both inaccurate and deceptive numbers.

He cites early on in his speech that he heard the top 1% of income earners pay over 50% of all income taxes. This number is false. According to the IRS, the top 1% in 2009 paid about 37% of all income taxes.

You missed that he was talking about California taxes, not Federal. I dont know if he said "over", its actually "almost 50%".

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ORIGINAL: MasterSlaveLA

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ORIGINAL: ArizonaBossMan

His commentary on the OWS bunch is spot on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cJD8pZiRIzs

"ass-douche"

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ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

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ORIGINAL: LVnewDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

The main issue I have with Carolla's analysis is that it seems to be predicated upon both inaccurate and deceptive numbers.

He cites early on in his speech that he heard the top 1% of income earners pay over 50% of all income taxes. This number is false. According to the IRS, the top 1% in 2009 paid about 37% of all income taxes.

You missed that he was talking about California taxes, not Federal. I dont know if he said "over", its actually "almost 50%".

Whoops, my bad. Luckily, my point still stands. The top 1% in California only pay about 27% of all state and local taxes in that state. Describing it as almost 50% is even more inaccurate in this situation. (that's ignoring the seeming irrelevence California's taxes on something he claims is a national and wide spread problem.)

In either case, the bulk of my post dealt with the inherent deceptive nature of using such a figure for the purpose he did, questions of accuracy aside.

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

quote:

ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

quote:

ORIGINAL: LVnewDom

quote:

ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

The main issue I have with Carolla's analysis is that it seems to be predicated upon both inaccurate and deceptive numbers.

He cites early on in his speech that he heard the top 1% of income earners pay over 50% of all income taxes. This number is false. According to the IRS, the top 1% in 2009 paid about 37% of all income taxes.

You missed that he was talking about California taxes, not Federal. I dont know if he said "over", its actually "almost 50%".

Whoops, my bad. Luckily, my point still stands. The top 1% in California only pay about 27% of all state and local taxes in that state. Describing it as almost 50% is even more inaccurate in this situation. (that's ignoring the seeming irrelevence California's taxes on something he claims is a national and wide spread problem.)

In either case, the bulk of my post dealt with the inherent deceptive nature of using such a figure for the purpose he did, questions of accuracy aside.

There was nothing deceptive about it.

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ORIGINAL: BanthaSamantha

Additionally, the use of the value is deceptive even if you use the correct value of 37%. By itself, this mathematical fact has little meaning. The figure means that of all the tax dollars paid, the top 1% pay about 37% of them. This is a very high number, but is it really that unusual? No. Since the wealthy tend to make a higher percentage of the total income, we'd expect them to also pay a higher share of the total tax collected. To put it simply, the wealthy pay a lot of tax dollars because they make a lot of income. Some people deceptively try to use this figure to make it seem like the top 1% are paying obscenely high rates, whether 50% or 37%, when such simply isn't the case.

To illustrate the point, compare the income and taxes of both the bottom and top 50%. The bottom 50% paid only 2.3% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid a staggering 97.7% of all income taxes. Does such an evocative number mean that the top 50% are paying ridiculously high tax rates? Absolutely not. The top 50% are paying 97.7% of income tax because they make 86.5% of all income. When you compare 97.7% with 86.5%, the values aren't really all that different; the small difference can be chalked up to the progressive nature of our tax code.

A far better way to look at the situation is to compare a person's income with the amount of money they pay in income tax. i.e. their effective tax rate. In 2009, the top 1% had an average effective tax rate of 24%. That's substantially lower than the 37% cited earlier, and a far cry from the 50% cited by Carolla.