We hear all the time that half of Americans don’t pay any income taxes. The top federal rate is currently 35%. In order to use 17% for the “average”, that would mean that virtually every dollar of income that go to those that do pay taxes, must be subject to just under the maximum tax. Obviously, that can’t be true, since even high income taxpayers still pay lower rates on their income below the top tax bracket. In fact, most people who do pay taxes, don’t have a single dollar subject to the maximum rate.
Similar, but even more ridiculous on the state tax. The same 50% of taxpayers who pay no income tax referred to above, presumably pay little or no state tax, so including the maxiumum state tax rate as the average is absurd. It also fails to take into consideration the states that have no income tax or rates substantially lower than 10.1%.
All income is not subject to sales tax. In fact, no income is. Only spending. The caclulation in the link assumes 100% of income is taxed at a relatively high sales tax rate. Effectively impossible, since we’ve already deducted federal and state income taxes which can’t possibly be spent on taxable consumption.
The others aren’t near as egregiously wrong. But the last one is pretty funny. It lists estate, inheritance and gift as separate taxes. They are essentially the same thing. And amount to, on average, about $110 per taxpayer. That would be slightly over .1% of annual income for average taxpayers. Additionally, it lists something called “deficit allowance”. I’m reasonably sure there is no such thing as a “deficit allowance” tax.
But yeah, facts are pesky. And that link doesn’t contain many. It’s probably theoretically possible for some people to pay >50% in taxes. Whether it actually happens very often is pretty unlikely.
