Non-progressive taxes - updated

http://lanekenworthy.net/2009/01/05/how-progressive-are-our-taxes/


How Progressive Are Our Taxes?
January 5, 2009

Stephen Dubner has a post on the “Freakonomics” blog titled “The next time someone tells you that taxes are not progressive…” He relays information from a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, via Greg Mankiw, which lists effective federal tax rates for households at various points in the income distribution. The rates are higher for those with larger incomes. The implication is that our tax system is quite progressive.

But it doesn’t make much sense to look only at federal taxes. State and local taxes account for about a third of total tax revenues, and they tend to be less progressive than federal taxes.

If we take into account all taxes — federal, state, and local — the effective tax rate for the well-to-do is only a bit higher than for the poor. Here is one way to see this, based on data from the CBO and the Tax Foundation.
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From a comment on the same thread. I haven't read these books yet, but I'll look for them:

mmckinl says...

If you really want the goods on personal taxes including income tax and capital gains read :

~Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else ~

~ Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and StickYou with the Bill)

Both by David Cay Johnston ~ a true American hero ...

Johnston received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting "for his penetrating and enterprising reporting that exposed loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, which was instrumental in bringing about reforms." He also won the Book of the Year award from Investigative Reporters & Editors.

Posted by: mmckinl | Link to comment | January 05, 2009 at 08:59 PM