Wealthiest Americans paying 17 percent effective income tax rate, down 9 points since 1992 - Daily Kos
Wealthiest Americans paying 17 percent effective income tax rate, down 9 points since 1992 - Daily Kos
By Meteor Blades for Daily Kos
If you’ve just finished filing your taxes and you owe the IRS, or you’re planning to wait until the absolute last minute because you suspect you owe the IRS, you probably don’t want to hear this: The average federal income tax rate for all Americans has gone down in the past 20 years. Overall, it’s dropped from 9.9 percent to 9.3 percent since 1992. But among the 400 people with the highest adjusted gross income in the country, averaging $345 million a year, the average rate—the effective rate—has dropped from 26 percent to 17 percent. This disparity is both symptom and disease, a marker for the ever-increasing inequality of income (and-wealth) in the United States, not just between the top 400 and the rest of us, but between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent, and especially the top 1 percent.