Incendiary Data in a Plain Paper Journal

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Incendiary Data in a Plain Paper Journal
By Sam Pizzigati

March 24th, 2009 - 8:07pm ET


Of all the people in the United States, 99.99 percent have never perused the pages of the Statistics of Income Bulletin, a research journal the IRS publishes four times a year. For the power suits on Wall Street, that’s a good thing. If more Americans ever really digested the sort of statistics that appear regularly in this journal, the storm of protest from average Americans might make last week’s rage over AIG seem about as fearsome as a tantrum from a toddler.

The latest edition of the SOI journal popped up earlier this month, with a lead article that looks at who made what back in 2006 — and who paid how much in federal income taxes.

But this article goes on to offer a good bit more than income and tax stats for 2006. The IRS authors have, rather thoughtfully, placed the 2006 income and tax data in a neat historic perspective. They go back 20 years, essentially a generation, and, in the process, tell a gripping story of greed and grasping.

Back in 1986, affluent taxpayers needed to report the equivalent of $118,818 to enter the ranks of the nation’s highest income 1 percent. Average affluents in this top 1 percent, 20 years ago, paid a third of their incomes, 33.1 percent, in federal income tax.

In 2006, by contrast, an annual income of $118,818 wouldn’t get you within shouting distance of the elite top 1 percent. In that year, a taxpayer needed $388,806 to hit the income ladder’s top rung.

But the rich in today’s top 1 percent aren’t just making much more than top 1 percent households made 20 years ago. They’re paying much less of that income in federal income tax. In 2006, the top 1 percent paid a mere 22.8 percent of their incomes to Uncle Sam, down from that 33.1 percent in 1986. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031324/incendiary-data-plain-paper-journal

[JDPriestly]

1. Kicked and recommended

[Pooka Fey]

2. K&R

[acmavm]

3. K&R

[bertman]

4. I haven't even gone to the link and I'm already outraged.

Recommend.