Krugman- Zombie Tax Lies!

[n2doc]

The claim that only rich people pay taxes is a zombie lie — something that keeps coming back no matter how many times it’s killed by evidence.

So, let’s try another shot to the head.

Yes, high-income people pay the bulk of the federal income tax. But that’s not the only tax! And while the income tax is quite progressive, the payroll tax — the other major federal tax — isn’t; and state and local taxes are strongly regressive.

Citizens for Tax Justice (pdf) has the goods: combining all taxes, federal, state, and local, we get this:





The overall system is barely progressive at all.

And here’s the thing: the people peddling this stuff about those lucky duckies who don’t pay tax because their incomes are low know all this, because it has been pointed out many times. They are deliberately trying to deceive you.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/zombie-tax-lies/

Too bad there isn't some sort of Joe Isuzu option for republican pundits-every time they spew this, a red "He's lying" appears on screen.

[bbgrunt]

1. ...and please note that the last 4 categories should

be combined to see both their total percent of taxes and total percent of income.

[jwirr]

2. Yes, they went 20-20-20 and then broke it up into smaller percentages.

I wonder why they did that? Maybe because the graph would have gone off the page if they did not?

[bbgrunt]

3. well axis scales would be one consideration.

Another might be the perception that the middle 20% pays almost as much as the top 1%--and it also diminishes the the perception of the total progressivity in tax vs. income percentages of the top 20%.

edited to add: I'm not sure about the philosophy of "citizens for tax justice" or their source of info. but I suspect they are a conservative group and are not including tax incidence of things like property taxes.

re-edited: Wiki says they are the main group supporting greater progressivity so I guess they're not conservative.