Source: Slate
The canard that people don’t carry their fair share is a trope that Republicans love to roll out, and the 47 percent figure is their favorite data point to support it.
But as I have been saying for some time now, the 47 percent figure, while technically accurate as it relates to federal income taxes, doesn’t include what people do pay through the payroll tax, sales taxes, excise taxes, and all sorts of other levies . So here is a partial breakdown of how those other burdens fall on the population, courtesy of the Tax Policy Center and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:
28.3 percent pay payroll taxes, which cover Social Security and Medicare.
10.3 percent pay no federal income tax because they are retired or elderly, and Social Security payments are not taxed. I can’t imagine that Romney objects to this category.
It turns out that just 6.9 percent of people who are non-elderly don’t pay income tax. That is a far cry from 47 percent. We are not, in fact, a nation of moochers, as Romney seems to suggest.
And here is a more important point: How does the burden of our tax system fall? Do the less wealthy really get off easy?
It turns out that tax payments are almost directly proportional to the income we earn when everything is factored in.
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