Friday, April 22, 2005

Flat Rate Income Tax Coming?

Hell, it's already here. Not as flat as Kansas, but pretty damned flat nonetheless. Nothing is as flat as Kansas. CSMonitor, via JoshMarshall:
"Chalk up President Bush as not just a tax cutter but also a tax flattener. Under Mr. Bush and a Republican Congress, big tax cuts since 2001 have given major tax reductions to those wealthy individuals presumed, up to now, to be able to afford paying a bigger chunk of their income in taxes. By one measure of the federal, state, and local tax burden, just 3.4 percentage points separate the effective tax rate paid by the top 1 percent of earners from the other 99 percent of American households." US already moving toward a flat tax
Mr. Marshall notes that "the top 1% (average income=$978,000) pays 32.8% and the middle 20% (average income=$34,500) pays 27%. I'd say that's pretty flat already." As the article notes, the "'effective' tax rate is that which taxpayers actually pay", not the marginal rate assessed against the top dollar of income.

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