Jeanne Sahadi writes that the direct income tax burden is far from evenly spread this year:
Most people think they pay too much to Uncle Sam, but for some people it simply is not true.
In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks.
The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero — or less — is on the rise. The center’s original 2009 estimate was 38%. That was before enactment in February of the $787 billion economic recovery package, which included a host of new or expanded tax breaks.
I guess that “soak the rich” plan really is working, then?
For those of a more “progressive” orientation, this is all to the good: those filthy rich paying disproportionally high rates is good, in their view. What it doesn’t take into account is human nature . . . just because they’ll pay that much this year doesn’t mean they’ll do nothing to change that picture next year or the year after that. The big risk being run here is that it will encourage “the rich” to reduce their taxable income (which often means switching from economically more productive uses to less productive ones) or even to remove themselves from the picture altogether (tax havens exist for a lot of reasons).
If only 1% of taxpayers are paying over 40% of the total tax collected, it only takes a few of them to move to a lower-tax jurisdiction to seriously impact the total taxes collected.
Doug Mataconis hopes that this will have a positive outcome:
Once the American people realize that “soak the rich” isn’t going to pay for all the things they claim they want from government, it’s entirely possible that they’ll decide that maybe the state doesn’t need to be as intrusive as it’s become over the years.
I’m not as confident that this is the lesson that most people would draw: once they’re comfortable with the idea of the government providing everything, they’ll be unwilling to go back to the “less civilized” model of having to provide for themselves.
