All these numbers flying around. How to make sense of it all? This did it for me.
Taken from a WSJ editorial of April 18, 2011.
Where the Tax Money Is
A dominant theme of President Obama's is that our fiscal problems would vanish if only the wealthiest Americans were asked "to pay a little more." Since he's asking, imagine that instead of proposing to raise the top income tax rate well north of 40%, the President decided to go all the way to 100%.
Got that? a 100% tax rate. No take home.
First a 100% tax on the really rich. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000, yields about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget. Not enough millionaires.
Say we take it up to the top 10%, everyone with income over $114,000. That would get $3.4 trillion. We are getting there, but we need more.
So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from ALL individual taxpayers. There that does it. Take every penny earned by everyone and you will be able to afford Obamacare and all the other entitlements.
Show this to people who will get it.
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