Bush’s Tax Cuts Are Unfair …

TO THE RICH.

This article, Bush’s Tax Cuts Are Unfair … To The Rich, is from October 2004, but I feel is still relevant today. (Especially with the Democrats thinking about repealing the tax cuts.) I found this while looking for data regarding the federal tax rates and revenue and the effect it had on the poor, middle class, and wealthy. And for those of you that feel that the middle class pays a disproportionate amount of taxes, consider this data: The top 10% of income earners paid 70% of the federal income tax. And, as Steven E. Landsburg in the Slate article writes, “it seems patently unfair to ask anyone to pay over 30 times as much as his neighbors (unless he receives 30 times as much in government services, which strikes me as implausible).”

Select quotes from the article below. Please visit the site to see the rest of the article and the charts/graphs.

The Bush tax cuts (which Congress just voted to extend) are an affront to the most fundamental principles of fairness. They are skewed in favor of those who already pay less than their rightful share of taxes and shift the burden even farther onto the shoulders of the most overtaxed. In other words, the Bush tax cuts are unfair to the rich.

I know there’s a lot of hype to the contrary, but look at the numbers. If you and your spouse have a taxable income of $60,000 a year, you’ve had almost a 24 percent income tax cut since President Bush took office. (And ditto if your income was just $20,000.) Meanwhile, the folks who make $350,000 a year got a cut of only about 12.5 percent; those who make $1 million a year got an even smaller cut.

My own opinion is that the rich already pay too much—it seems patently unfair to ask anyone to pay over 30 times as much as his neighbors (unless he receives 30 times as much in government services, which strikes me as implausible). If you share my sense of fairness, you’ll join me in condemning the president’s tax policy.

(the bolding is mine)

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