The Dream Hoarders: How America's Top Percent Perpetuates Inequality

Re:The Dream Hoarders: How America's Top Percent Perpetuates... by roenxi on Monday February 11, 2019 @05:53PM (#19139289)

I have similar feelings whenever people point out that "tax break X favours the rich!" (today, X is 529 college saving plans).

I mean, duh. Half of the US federal income tax comes from 1% households. The rich disproportionately pay tax. If poor people had enough money to pay significant amounts of tax they wouldn't be poor; they only get charged anything to enforce a perception of fairness and give them some skin in the game.

Any tax break is going to favour the wealthy; because as a rule the median tax dollar came from someone wealthy.

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Re:The Dream Hoarders: How America's Top Percent Perpetuates... by TheCoelacanth on Monday February 11, 2019 @06:57PM (#19139743)

Poor people do pay significant amounts of tax, just not "federal income tax". They do pay two other federal taxes on income (one is a fixed rate, the other actually decreases in rate at higher incomes). They also pay state and local taxes, which are usually much flatter than federal taxes and frequently the poor actually end up paying a larger portion of their income on state and local taxes.

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