Stating the obvious: I don’t like paying taxes. But when I boil down what we get back from those taxes… like most Americans I don’t mind paying my fair share. We have an educated public mostly because of school taxes. I believe that we all benefit from an educated population.

Physical infrastructure and lots of public lands and services are paid for by our taxes. I don’t use a lot of things that I help pay for – but if it helps keep roads open and good people here, I support it. Most of us are paying for the relief and rebuilding after the horrible storms that hit the east coast. To me, that’s good even though we get no direct benefit. 

Who actually pays the most taxes? A commonly repeated ‘fact’ is that the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers pay more than the other 90% of taxpayers. That seems to convey that a small number of people pay a disproportionate burden. That would be unfair. So, I did some research.

Ultra rich people do account for a big share of the income taxes paid. But that’s because rich people account for a massive share of the income. For most taxpayers, the biggest tax they pay is not income tax. It’s payroll taxes. That’s FICA tax and it pays for Social Security and Medicare. We pay Social Security taxes on the first 143k earned. Since most earn less than that… it is considered a regressive tax whereby a bigger percentage of taxes the middle class pays goes to those programs. 

The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy examined earners and what percentage of total tax they pay. Those in the highest 15% of earners make about 25.5% of all income, and they pay 26% of all taxes. The highest 4% of earners make 15.5% of all income and they pay 16.3%. That means the top 1% of earners make about 21% of all income. They pay 24.1% of total income tax revenue.  In 2022 – the IRS collected 4.9tt. That means the top 1% paid 1.18tt. That’s hardly 90% of all income tax. The top 15% earners made 62% of all income. They paid 66.4 of all taxes.

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