Rich Americans ARE paying their fair share

The CBO did a study. The rich were paying their fair share BEFORE Obama’s tax increases.

Investors Business Daily

The CBO looks at the distribution of household income and federal taxes up through 2011, the last year for which it has data. It found, for example, that:

While the top 1% of households accounted for 15% of all income, they paid 35% of all federal income taxes. The bottom 20% accounted for 5.3% of income, but they got more in refundable tax credits, on average, than they paid in income taxes.

Even when you include payroll and other federal taxes, the bottom 20% carried just 0.6% of the total tax burden.

Overall federal tax rates on the top 1% have averaged around 30% for more thaFn three decades, but the rate paid by the bottom 20% has dropped steadily, going from 9% in 1984 to 1.9% in 2011.

Despite all the hullabaloo about how Bush's tax cuts favored the rich, the share of income taxes paid by the top 1% climbed from 22% in Bush's first year in office to 25% by 2008. The share paid by the bottom group dropped from 1.4% to 0.4%.