eglamkowski's Journal: The nefarious "Bush tax cut"

Direct from the IRS:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02in03at.xls

Take a look at the "Tax as percentage of AGI" columns. The highest income brackets actually saw their tax rates INCREASE between 2000 and 2002!!

The 50% breakpoint is at $28,117
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html

Unfortunately, the tax stats in that excel spreadsheet don't match up to $28K, but if we average the average tax decrease for all the listed brackets up to the 25-30K bracket, the average decrease for the bottom 50% of income earners was 1.8%.

For the top 50%, the average tax decrease was 0.25%. That, of course, includes the higest brackets where the tax rate actually increased.

The break point for the top 1% is 292,913. We heard a lot of hysteria about the top 1% getting all of the benefit of the tax break. Unfortunately, the top 1% saw an average INCREASE in their tax rates of 0.67%.

So, the bottom 50% saw a decrease in their tax rates, on average, of 1.8%.

The top 50% saw a decrease in their tax rates, on average, of 0.25%.

The top 1% saw an INCREASE in their tax rates, to the tune of 0.67% on average.

Ahhh Numbers! Thanks!

[robi2106]

Thanks for finding these numbers. Very handy.

Any liberal worth that title will argue that this is just the income tax brackets. They will then talk about the death tax (aka estate tax), the dividend tax, and short/long capitol gains taxes... And how all of these were vastly rolled back for the "rich".

The only problem with those statements, is that the non-rich also have to deal with these issues (but they won't say so). I make under $50K a year, yet I face the same tax burden on any securities I manage

Re:Ahhh Numbers! Thanks!

[eglamkowski]

Any liberal worth that title will argue that this is just the income tax brackets. They will then talk about the death tax (aka estate tax), the dividend tax, and short/long capitol gains taxes... And how all of these were vastly rolled back for the "rich".

Death taxes, of course, typically don't affect low and middle income families. In 2002 and 2003, there was an exclusion of $1 million, a unified credit of $345,800. Both of these will go up in coming years, exempting even more people from estate taxes

Can I steal that?

[Quantum Jim]

Very interesting.... Can I plagiarize it? ;-)

Re:Can I steal that?

[eglamkowski]

Copy and paste away :-)