Sure, if you cheat on your taxes you should be barred from office.
Typical wealth envy, When the top 5% of achievers pay 60% of the taxes .. sounds to me like they are paying plenty.
What percent taxes should the richiest 1% pay? 30%? 50%? More?
Percentiles Ranked by AGI
AGI Threshold on Percentiles
Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1%
$388,806
39.89
Top 5%
$153,542
60.14
Top 10%
$108,904
70.79
Top 25%
$64,702
86.27
Top 50%
$31,987
97.01
Bottom 50%
<$31,987
2.99
Note: AGI is Adjusted Gross Income
Source: Internal Revenue Service
The lowest in the top 1% could pay the yearly income of one of the bottom 50% and only pay less than 9% of their wages on taxes.
Of COURSE they will pay more of the pot. They make more than 91% more money than the bottom 50 percent.
Think of it this way.
100 people.
50 of them have $5, 25 have $8.23, 15 have $16.64, 5 have $28.01, 4 have $39.49, and 1 has $100.
Now lets say they all got taxed 30%
They are left with
50 have $3.50 (total revenue $75), 25 have $5.76 (total revenue $61.75), 15 have $11.65 (total revenue $74.88), 5 have $19.61 (total revenue $42.02), 4 have $27.64 (Total revenue $47.39), and the one now has $70 (total revenue $30). Total revenue generated $331.04.
Now what happens when we make the one with a $100 start off with $1000? (translates into $3,888,060 per year) This works because the top 1% make greater than $388,806 so it is more akin to real world numbers to make that 1% have more than the minimum for the sake of the math experiment.
Now the numbers look the same for every one except the rich guy has $700 left over and paid $300 in taxes.
Total revenue is now $601.04! That guy just paid almost 50% of the total taxes!!!!
And think of it this way.
Let's say take 50 people who are in the bottom 50% that make just a single penny below the cut off from being in the top 50% ($31,986.99 per year) and then you take just one guy from the top 1% who makes $1,599,350 per year (a lot of money, sure, but not outrageous considering that there are about 2,000,000 millionaire household in the US excluding primary residence which is a little over half of 1% of the total population of the US so taking on of the top 1% is actually more likely to get you a millionaire than not).
The guy from the top 1% makes more money per year than all 50 of the bottom 50% COMBINED.
Now let's take 30% of taxes form them all.
The guy in the top 1% just paid out $479,805 and is left with a paltry $1,119,545 to get by on. This equals the pre-tax wages of 35 of those bottom 50%!
The bottom 50% would pay out a total of $479,804.85 and be left with the hefty sum of $22,380.84 each to live on.
So, what if the person in the top 1% made 14 million a year? Like Albert Haynesworth for example.
Haynesworth will make an average of about 14 million per year with his contract
So let's say he pays 30% of taxes on that or 4.2 million dollars. Add it the 480 thousand by 50 people in the bottom 50% and the total is 4.68 million, of which Haynesworth would have paid a whopping 89.74%! This is so unfair!!!! Poor Albert! He's being persecuted! How's he gonna live on 9.8 million a year?!?!?!?
I posted all of this to illustrate that quoting statistics doesn't mean anything if you don't take into account all the factors involved in creating the disparity you are pointing out.
I also used a flat tax rate to point out that the disparity would still occur if there wasn't a graduated tax-rate.
But let's face it, living off of 70% of 32K is not exactly the same thing as living off of 70% of $388,806
Or even more to the point, living on 98% of 32K ain't exactly the same as living on 50% of $388,806. Although both might have struggles, one's struggles are far more compelling than the other's.