HOW THE TAX BURDEN DISTRIBUTED

Much debate over tax policy concerns whether the wealthy pay their fair share. There is no objective way to make this judgment. In evaluating the issue for yourself however it is useful to know how much families with different incomes pay under the current tax system.

Table 8 presents some data on how all federal taxes are distributed among income classes. To construct this table families are ranked according to their income and placed into five groups of equal size called quintiles. The table also presents data on the richest one percent of Americans.

Studies that include both taxes and transfer show more progressivity. The richest group of families still pays about one quarter of its income to the government even after transfer are subtracted. By contrast poor families typically receive more in transfer than they pay in taxes. The average tax rate of the poorest quintile rather than being 5.5 percent as in the table is approximately negative 30 percent.

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