(06-17-2021, 09:44 AM)HURRICANE!!! Wrote:

(06-17-2021, 09:34 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: The highlighted part is not true.   I think you're again conflating wealth with income.  Those are not the same thing.  

In addition to that, it is not true that a person making $60,000 pays 22% in federal income tax.  In this case, you are taking the marginal tax rate and confusing that with the average tax rate.   A person making $60,000 pays 22% only on amounts over $40,526.  

Jeff Bezos paid $973,000,000 in taxes last year, on $4.22 billion in income.  That makes his average tax rate 23%, but his marginal tax rate was 37%, which is the top bracket.  

If you support a 20% flat tax, you will pay more tax and Jeff Bezos will pay less.

Geez -- I said "using the average"   --- attention to detail.

Using the average of what?  If you are using that 3.4%, then you are confusing wealth and income.  That figure ("3.4%") came from an article that stated that these billionaires are paying 3.4% of their increase in WEALTH.   But we don't have a federal tax on wealth.  So the 3.4% is derived from a hypothetical tax that doesn't exist.

Read the article again.  This is what it says:

We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.
The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

The 3.4% comes from dividing the income taxes paid by the estimated increase in wealth.  They are making up a hypothetical tax rate that they call the "true tax rate."  But we don't tax wealth in the United States.   Taxing wealth is unworkable and unconstitutional.   The authors are mixing apples and oranges to make a political point.  It's deceptive.  

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