Look at the facts on who pays taxes

The Daily Herald regularly publishers letters that decry the unfairness of our current federal tax system, that the "fat cats" and "rich" should be shouldering a greater tax burden.

The latest of these letters, from Ms. Karen Wagner (April 10), opines that "It is now time for those earning above $250,000 per year to pay more in taxes to help maintain our way of life." Her letter suggests that she is ignorant of the facts about who pays taxes. I use the term ignorant not in a pejorative sense, but as defined by Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary as meaning "destitute of knowledge" or "uninformed."

The unadorned facts are these; according to the latest data (2006) from the IRS, the top 25 percent of all tax filers, those with an AGI exceeding $64,702, already pay 86.3 percent of Federal Income Taxes.

The top 1 percent of all filers, those with an AGI exceeding $388,806, 1.3 million taxpayers, are responsible for 39.8 percent of all Federal Income Tax revenue. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns. Moreover the percentage of taxes paid by those taxpayers in the lower 50 percent, those with an AGI of less than $31,987, has shrunk from 7 percent in 1980 to 3 percent in 2006.

There were 135 million tax returns filed and of those, 43.4 million, 32 percent of all filers, had a zero or negative tax liability, up from 18 percent in 1983. Where will this trend end?

When the number of non-payers exceeds the number of payers won't they just continue to raise the bar? Does tale of the killing the goose that laid the golden egg ring a bell? Shouldn't everyone have some skin, in the game, even a minimal amount?

Joe H. Heater

Palatine