Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Poor Pay A Lot More in Taxes than the Top 5 Percent In Wisconsin

If we can't believe anything Republicans say, why do we believe their tax numbers?
Sobering and real, tea party protesters don't seem to mind the tax disparity between them and the wealthy. I have no problem with wealthy people, mind you, but when I pay more in taxes then they do, I get pissed off. One Wisconsin Now:

A new study out today shows that poor and middle class families are hit much harder by taxes in Wisconsin than the wealthiest taxpayers. In Wisconsin, it’s the working families that are asked to carry the burden. Individuals making between 20k and 88k all pay about 11% of their income in sales, property and income tax. The top 1% of income earners, that is, those folks making more than $388,000 per year, only pay in 8% of their income. The top five percent (159,000 and up) average about 8.6 percent of income paid in taxes.

One thing is abundantly clear: the wealthy aren’t paying their fair share, not by any measure. The people in Wisconsin who have the most breathing room in their finances are paying less than those of us living paycheck to paycheck.
Another telling stat one can pull from the ITEP report is the share of income sales tax takes up. For the lowest income range, sales tax chews up 6.3% of income, while the wealthiest skirt by with less than 1%.

We’re stuck with the conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance … “studies” are full of cherry-picked numbers to create an anti-tax environment here in the state that encourages conservative and regressive tax policy favoring the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

When was the last time WISTAX put out a study that showed the lower percentage of tax paid by the wealthy?

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