Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

By on December 31, 2010 in

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Earlier this week, Grant Bosse wrote how unfair the American tax system is to wealthy taxpayers. As proof, he provides this fact:

Our progressive income tax system, made steeper over the years, now yields revenues from which more are derived from the richest 1% of Americans than from the bottom 95% combined.

OK, an impressive sounding statistic. Also misleading and largely irrelevant. Since the income tax generates less than half of all federal tax revenue, a serious discussion of tax fairness must include all taxes — including payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, excise taxes, etc.

The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution found that in 2009, the top 1 percent shouldered the burden for roughly 23 percent of all federal taxes.

So the top 1 percent receive 16 percent of the nation’s income and are responsible for 23 percent of the total federal tax burden. That’s the nature of a progressive — and fair — tax system.


As further proof of how unfair the U.S. tax system is to the wealthy, Bosse cites corporate taxes:

We also learn today that Japan’s pending corporate tax rate cut will leave the U.S. with the highest corporate taxes in the world.

Also largely irrelevant. A complete measure of the corporate tax burden must include other aspects of the tax system, including exemptions, deferrals, tax credits, and other incentives. Take those into account and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is the 4th lowest among the 11 G8 and BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries.

As Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle noted, “Statistics are the greatest liars of them all.”

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  • nhveedub

    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whor…

    It’s long, but goes into great detail on wealth distribution versus other countries… the most ridiculous figure is the CEO pay versus line worker pay – ridiculous.

    Perhaps the Bosse family should open their eyes beyond Roger Ailes.

    • nhveedub

      From the above study:

      Another way that income can be used as a power indicator is by comparing average CEO annual pay to average factory worker pay, something that has been done for many years by Business Week and, later, the Associated Press. The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000.

      hhhmmmm, maybe Bosse would care to comment on that statistic?

  • hannah

    obligation, then any requirement is too much.  

  • political chowder

    Oh I forgot…it was never considered a tax until Obama cut it by 2% for one year.Next year the Republicans will be calling it the FICA tax and wail that the democratic president is going to increase taxes on the poor and middle class. If they do, do we now get to count FICA as part of the tax burden???? How are the rest of us doin’ then?

    And of course the rich have benefited from the social security surplus which was raided by Reagan and Presidents after to cover the cost of their wars and tax cuts for the wealthy. And despite the economic despair we are witnessing all over the US, the tax challenged rich have managed very nicely… just check out the double digit increases at Tiffany & Co.

  • elwood

    dammit.

    It doesn’t go into the General Fund. It is dedicated to the worker’s Social Security Trust Fund, which invests in bonds but belongs to the participants, not to the public at large.

    This is an important point.

    • political chowder

      remember when the tea party fanatics were screaming at politicians to get their slimy government hands off their medicare (did any Republican have the balls to tell them it was a big govt. program created by the God of Govt programs Johnson?) and we all remember Gore’s lock box…perception is reality. There was this great line that explains the confusion: Americans are symbolic conservatives and operational liberals.
      People don’t get it…they don’t pay income tax when they have no income but every dime they earn pushing a broom or emptying a garbage can has FICA removed from their hourly wage…to them it is less money in their pockets removed by government and the conservatives know how to play the fear and benefit from the program.

      • elwood

        I was happily surprised to see that polls showed the payroll tax cut back was opposed by a majority of the public, even though the tax deal overall was favored.

        People know that the Social Security system is funded differently than other programs, they know that there is a Trust Fund, they know that there is a cap.

        Beyond that the details get hazy – but they know that it’s a partisan issue and they don’t quite trust GWB’s “IOUs” rhetoric.

        Progressives should be highlighting the difference in FICA versus other programs, not cooperating in obscuring it.

  • hannah

    useless.  The point is that people who have no income don’t pay an income tax.  Just as people who don’t buy luxuries don’t pay a luxury sales tax.  And people who don’t buy liquor don’t pay a liquor tax.

  • tchair

    Much noise is made about how the rich are getting over taxed—-Phooey—The fica ( a tick over 15%) is payed on dollar 1 of wages and stops at about 106k. Its nature is highly regressive and puts lie to the claims the rich are abused. If the money was never touched then maybe you could call it a “nontax”.
    I believe the top 20% makes 80% of the income and pays 50% of the Fed taxes——-That leaves the rest of us earning20% of the income and paying 50% of the taxes—-FEEL SCREWED YET????

    • elwood

      Just what does this talking point, used by the right and the left and the middle, actually MEAN?

      The Social Security Trust Fund has been designed since the 1980s to build up a big surplus from higher-than-before payments from baby boomers and later generations. That surplus is intended to be drawn down as the “pig-in-the-python” generation retires with fewer future workers contributing.

      The Trust Fund has trillions in it.

      To “never touch it” would mean just leaving it in a zero-interest savings account, sapping resources from the national economy.

      Instead we invest it in US bonds that – by law – will be paid back with interest.

      And that is a bad model WHY?

      • elwood

        The whole “lockbox” language was prescient in that it recognized the risk that borrowing from the Trust Fund could make it easy for the federal government to overspend. But it put the spotlight on the wrong financial issue.

        What he should have said was,

        We need to continue the fiscal discipline that President Clinton used to eliminate the budget deficit. That means “paygo” rules: no new spending and no new tax cuts until we cut spending or increase revenue somewhere else. And borrowing from the Trust Fund doesn’t increase revenue.

        The issue has always been about General Fund borrowing and spending. The Trust Fund is a decoy.