re: #734 jester6

It is getting steeper.

I have been hearing more and more of my clients openly gripe about taxes over the last few months. I did some quick research to try to figure out how much Atlas would have to shrug to really hurt the government. Check this out:

-The Top 1% of Taxpayers earn $388,806 per year and pay 39.89% of federal income taxes

-The Top 5 % of taxpayers earn $153,542 per year and pay 60.14% of federal income taxes

-The Top 10% of taxpayers earn $108,904 per year and pay 70.79% of federal income taxes

-The vast majority of these people are small business owners. There income is not reported to the government on a W2. They have to be honest and report it themselves.

-The IRS has 115,000 employees, about 57% are administrative (policy wonks, secretaries, computer programmers). That leaves no more than 50,000 auditors, investigators, revenue agents and their managers.

-There are 138 million taxpayers (business and individuals). So a small business owner may be counted twice because he has to file a K-1 and 1040.

-That means the top 10% pays 70% of the income tax via 13.8 million returns.

- That is 276 returns for every non-admin employee at the IRS. There are only 260 workdays in a year if you don’t take days off.

- Every non-admin employee in the IRS would have to audit one return a day and take no days off if they wanted to watch everyone.

Conclusion: if the “rich” really are as evil and uncaring as the leftists say they could cripple the government and the IRS does not have the ability to stop them. If Atlas shrugs this is how he will do it.

my exact sentiment…and it is doable