Obama 2012
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Must read: Is the Income Tax System Fair?
Excerpt: Barack Obama’s critique of the income tax system is way off the mark. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, says the president, Republicans have been protecting the rich at every opportunity — shielding them from the obligation to pay their fair share. Yet here are some facts about U.S. income taxes that most people don’t know: Over the past quarter century, our income tax system has become increasingly progressive — with the tax burden almost continuously shifting through time from the bottom half to the top half of the income distribution. (See the graph below.) As a result of this seismic shift in the tax burden, more than half of U.S. households (taxpayer units”) pay no income tax at all and30% of all households actually make money off the income tax system (pay “negative taxes”) through the Earned Income Tax Credit. More than one-third of all income taxes are now paid by the top 1 percent and almost three-fourths of all income taxes are paid by the top 10%. According to an OECD report, the U.S. currently has the most progressive tax system among all developed countries. Although it’s hard to assign responsibility to the two political parties, Republicans are probably responsible for 80 percent of the increase in progressivity. If you find any of this surprising, the obvious question is: why? If the president wants to have a national discussion about the distribution of the tax burden, why are the American people not better informed? There are three reasons: Republicans, Democrats and the news media.
