How do you know you're right?
Sometimes it's very easy. Just go check the data. Like with who pays federal income tax.
When you hear a democrat politician, or the left wing media who support them claim that “the rich don’t pay their fair share”, do you believe that? Now of course somewhere close to zero people on the left, whether in office, running for office, or simply acting as a mouthpiece in the media, will actually state what that fair share percentage should be. They won’t even give a ballpark range of what is fair.
That lack of detail does not stop the message, which gets repeated ad nauseam, from getting through and being believed. About 15 years ago I took a survey around the office I worked in, and even most Republicans thought that the middle class paid almost all the taxes. They knew to some extent that lower earners weren’t paying much, but they also thought that “the rich” were getting off almost scot-free.
What’s the truth? The truth is that the upper 10% of earners are paying over 2/3 of all taxes. The upper 25% pay over 85% of all taxes in some years. So no, it’s not even close to being true that the middle class are paying the tab. And what’s just as shocking to most people is that the bottom 50% pay only 3 to 4% of all taxes. So literally half of the filers are getting pretty much a free ride.
Source: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/
The table above would get even more dramatic if federal benefits, including the “earned income tax credit” were factored in. They are not. Add those in and the bottom 50% are receiving a net of transfer payments only, and not contributing at all towards federal spending requirements.
What about FICA? Social security and Medicare/Medicaid, you say? These have to be lumped in? In a word, no. The fact that some lower income earners still have to pay something for their retirement, and their healthcare in retirement, above and beyond what they get in credits, welfare benefits, etc., is simply them saving for their own purposes. If you want to get into a discussion of how the democrats and some RINOs long ago dipped their hands into FICA receipts for general use, that is an entirely different issue that does not change the big picture facts at all. In fact, most of those in the lower AGI brackets will also pay far less in FICA taxes, such that they will require others who paid more to increase the value of their retirement benefits.
Lumping billionaires and the otherwise mega wealthy into the discussion as though they are similar to the average well compensated neurosurgeon millionaire, for example, is another deception to be explained another time. And whenever Warren Buffet or Bill Gates tells you that their tax rates aren’t high enough, tell them to get out their checkbook right now and put their money where their mouth is. There is nothing stopping them from paying more immediately if they really believed they needed to pay more.