by Sandy » Mon May 14, 2018 9:49 am
If you really want to research this, and find out exactly what the upper 1% wind up paying, not just theoretically according to the structure, but in actual dollars, you have to dig into the exemptions and loopholes that don't kick in until you get to the higher brackets. A person can sustain a one year loss of, say, $1 million, spread that out across the income tax returns for the next decade, and wind up paying zero tax, even if he earned it back across the course of that decade. And you can see a bit of inequity in the fact that while the top 1% pays a theoretical 37% of the tax, depending on who you cite, they earn over 80% of the income.
Discussions on this board related to income inequity, taxes and similar matters, from the conservative side, always seem to weight heavily in the favor of the wealthy, who are perceived as entitled to their wealth, and never to be held accountable or responsible for having it. Maybe there's a bit of reticent belief, misinterpreted Old Testament holdover, that wealth is a sign of God's blessing, at least for males. The Bible is the verbally, plenary inspired, inerrant, infallible, literally interpreted word of God except for select passages of Matthew 5-7, Matthew 19:16-22, Mark 10:17-22, and the better portion of Acts from chapters 2 through 7, and a few other places here and there.