> Why specify what specific tax it is?

Because the majority (50%) of the money spent by the US Federal government is mainly from federal income tax.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sourc...

Right, but the misleading "Don't pay Federal Income Taxes" trope purposefully ignores that they do pay Federal Payroll Taxes -- which per your chart is another 36% of government revenue.

Digging into the report, 43.3% of people didn't pay either in 2020 [1], if that helps you out at all.

[1] - https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/tax-units-ze...

> Why would they be different?

It doesn't make a lot of sense, but the fact of the matter is that the phrase "income tax" as commonly used does not include payroll taxes. "Income tax" refers only to the tax on "taxable income", i.e. your net income after deductions and credits. Payroll tax, by way of contrast, is taken from the very first dollar you make, so the only way you can avoid paying that is if you are unemployed. Saying that "61% of Americans do not contribute to the pool of money that is spent by the federal government as a result of their income" is tantamount to saying that 61% of Americans are unemployed, which is plainly not the case. (BTW, "income" in the sense of "income tax" does include dividends and capital gains, which are not subject to payroll taxes. So it is possible to make millions while unemployed and pay no payroll taxes. That is actually not uncommon. In fact, it's the norm among retired people.)

For others, lisper is replying to the original version of the GP comment which stated that federal income and payroll taxes were one and the same for the 61% number.

Yep, I was 100% wrong, and felt I should bow out of the conversation as a result. I left in the research that made me discover how incorrect I was, to help guide others.

It is customary in cases like this not to delete the erroneous comment but rather to add an [UPDATE] tag at the end to add a correction. This keeps the original thread of the conversation intact. There is no shame in making mistakes. Everyone does it.

I don't agree for a number of reasons, but mostly that I don't think "custom" alone is a good reason to do literally anything.

But I respect your opinion, and I hope you are able to forgive me.

You should add an update to the 43% comment as well to say that percent is only true for 2020 and 2021. Every other year it is usually below 25%. Including going into the future with their simulation. I find a technically correct statistic that helps the same narrative as the incorrect/wrong stat is possibly even worse.

Like the sibling said. It should be an update or edit. Not a change of the comment entirely.

Hope you can make that change as there are a lot of comments that have replied to you.

Cheers for acknowledging you made a mistake. Like many others. That is sometimes hard for me to admit.

Edit: I just looked at this and other articles. They all say to be aware of how isolated 2020 and 2021 are due to the stimulus. I believe it is bad faith to put 43% as the number when for every other year, the number is usually below 25%.

EDIT: This to me is another indicator of the narrative pushing and stat specifying that muddies the waters.

—-

It would be quite helpful if the net worth/wealth of individuals who don’t pay either is given as well. When that 43% figure is pointed out. Generally people only think of lower economic class people. Not situations like the previous president not paying taxes for a number of years.

Otherwise all these stats still do not change my original point that they all muddy the waters and people assume the stats are only referring to lower income individuals or “leeches” who are of lower socioeconomic levels too.

There's also the early-pandemic dip. The stock gains aren't nearly so dramatic when you look at the bigger picture.

The report says that the % of people(tax units) who didn't pay either in 2020 was 20.5%.

The 43.3% was the % of tax units that had a net negative income and payroll taxes (thought I doubt this included the employer side of the tax which for economics purposes falls on the worker). But that was also the Covid year.

Most years it's 25%-22%, which doesn't seem high for the poor, the disabled, and the retired.

Could many of these people be retirees? It takes a lot of wealth to retire and then you don’t pay income tax.

Only 16.5% of the population is over 65 years old. And many retirees do pay income tax. So most of this number is not retirees.

I said “many” not “all.”

The question I have is how to have policies that don’t hurt that 16.5%. It seems unfair to go after the elderly and take away the money they have worked hard to save. They are already being hurt by inflation, which sits at about 5%.

once you combine that with 16 and under, you are getting most of it.

Note the jump from 2019 to 2020. 25% in 2019 to that 43% figure you note here.

That’s fairly important context. 43% is not a typical number, and as you can see in the report, it is expected to return to baseline quickly.

That's not what your link says. The final rows are "don't pay either" (20% of tax units). The one you quoted is from the 2020 data for "Zero or Negative Sum of Income and Payroll Taxes".

Your total tax liability can become zero, even post the 7-ish% Social Security and such, due to the EITC and so on. For example, if you make $20,000 / yr but have two children (made up numbers), you probably end up with a sum of zero.

What does a "sum of zero" mean, in "dollars paid to the US government overall"?

The $300-600/week/person benefit counts as part of that sum (plus the one off checks). So you could have Federal taxes of say $2000 and then benefits of $10000, resulting in a net transfer (sum of "zero" is probably not right, <= zero).

I do not understand your point. The parent is saying FICA/payroll taxes are 36%. That’s revenue for the federal government and some of it is spent by the federal govt.

So I do not understand your first sentence. Maybe you can clarify.

Original comment from parent:

> They do not pay Federal Payroll Taxes, because those are considered Federal Income Taxes. Why would they be different? Taxes come out of their paycheck, of which they get back from the government when their taxes are due.

> The point is that 61% of Americans do not contribute to the pool of money that is spent by the federal government as a result of their income (though they do pay as a result of sales and other taxes).

Payroll taxes are paid by the employer.

>Payroll taxes are paid by the employer.

Half of payroll taxes are paid by the employer. The other half are paid by the employee.

And if the employer wasn't paying that half, they might pay at least some portion of that to the employee. And employers don't pay any payroll tax for non-employees.

Sort of at the Federal level (though these tend to colloquially be understood/communicated as "income taxes" despite being de jure FICA/payroll).

This _isn't_ true at the state level, where payroll taxes may be paid by an employer and not the employee.

In the end it is a wash.

>This _isn't_ true at the state level, where payroll taxes may be paid by an employer and not the employee.

That's not true in my state.

>In the end it is a wash.

Not even close.

Show me a state that has combined (employer/employee) payroll taxes of 15.3%. What's that? No state comes anywhere close to that?

Not a wash by a long shot.

In your effort to create a false dichotomy you have ignored several factors and points.

15.3% is the FICA factor (assuming not above income cap), split evenly between employer and employee. Add on top how the state, municipalities, school districts extract their payroll/income taxes, which can be 100% on employee, 50% on employee, 0% on employee, or none of the above. In Texas, it is 100% on employer. In Ohio, the split mixes and matches with some of the entities charging the employer and employee. Ergo, it's not always a 50/50 split between employee and employer.

In the end, it is a wash whether applied to employer or employee. FICA extracts the same amount, and other entities will extract their amount. Reduction by the employee or employer via credits are typically not feasible or are strongly engineered against.

Thanks, and this is my last comment on this thread. Have a good day.

> they do pay Federal Payroll Taxes

The 36% on that chart is labeled "SOCIAL INSURANCE (PAYROLL) TAXES". Are you suggesting the employer pays these taxes?

Thank you.

Right and so what does saying this achieving? There is still so much nuance as to, in my opinion, make this fact practically useless.

There’s no breakdown of capital gains taxes. Or how much taxes are not captured because of loopholes or tax benefits that go to this segment or that segment of income level or wealth.

OTOH, I don’t know how many services come from local government that isn’t the federal government.

These are simplified examples/points. The point remains both the original stat and this one portray a skewed narrative.

I don’t think this changes anything for my original comment. One could say it even bolsters the case as it is another example of how misleading a quick stat can be.

But the thing is that if americans who don't pay taxes don't own stocks and americans who build most of the social system, the top 10% who pay all those taxes, also own stocks, it might compel someone to say... thanks, rather than "fuck you"... ?

I don't know, if you just redistribute ALL the wealth by murdering the 10% to the rest, what do you think will happen to the taxes ? What will happen to all that "the rich don't pay enough", when actually they paid everything, when it's time for YOU to pay ?

I think that's what all these people in the thread hint at.

I know that’s what people believe and hint at. That’s the point of the original statistic. To give this distorted unproven worldview.

Who do you think does most of the work across the country?

Stock owners aren’t actually doing much. They also aren’t paying high rates of taxes.

why wouldn’t one of these people think why is income tax different than capital gains tax to the extent it is.

Or why their limited money doesn’t allow them to earn money just for having money. While those top 10% can avg close to 10% a year on their saved money in the form of investments (before inflation, fees). Yet there’s no wealth tax or any other way to not make things seem illogical that the mere fact of having money begets more money.

Can these questions not be asked before either thanks or fuck you.

> the top 10% who pay all those taxes,

Do you have any sources around this info?

> There is still so much nuance as to, in my opinion, make this fact practically useless.

Agreed, and so is the title of the thread we are discussing.

> The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks

Why is the title to the thread just as practically useless? It seems less useless to me. It is at least giving some semblance of the high levels of wealth inequality.

So 50% of the Federal government's income is taxes that every working American does pay.

There are also corporate taxes and estate taxes, and payroll taxes of which the employer must pay half.

corporate and payroll taxes are all paid by employees depending on elasticity, their income would be higher if the taxes didn't exist. True for estate tax.

I dont know anyone that got a substantial pay raise in 2017 when the corporate tax rate went from 35% to 21%. I also dont remember prices declining.

are you sure that corporate taxes are paid by the employee and lowering taxes results in higher pay and lower prices?

Wages are sticky because people generally don't like job hopping. Over time they absolutely lead to higher wages as firms compete for employees.

As far as corporate tax incidence, the literature is pretty clear that they reduce wages. They reduce return on capital too, some estimate that a $1 corporate tax costs capital 60 cents and labor 40 cents from what I've read. Some estimates are 50/50 though. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20130570

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00142...

A scenario:

Daddy Warbucks learns that the government is raising corporate taxes. He goes and tells his workers the government has cut their pay. He has no choice. Business necessity.

Daddy Warbucks learns that the government has cut corporate taxes. He pockets the windfall.

There is some business logic behind this: if the windfall is temporary, he doesn't want to raise salaries. That would be difficult to undo if the tax rates go back up. And whether this is the logic that actually motivates his decision hardly matters. Who can know what is in his heart? Even he doesn't. This helps him sleep at night. When he harms others his hand has been forced. When he helps other it proves his essential goodness. Fundamental attribution error FTW!

The logic is that the unions are dead and workers have no bargaining power to demand a raise even with the tax cut.

Yeah, the personal income elasticity with respect to those taxes doesn’t seem appreciable.

"Money spent" != "income". The other 50% is deficit spending.

Look at the chart again. It's revenue, not spending.

True, but manyservices that Americans get from government comes from state and local government: schools, fire/police, etc. The feds dominate the national new coverage, but local government generally has a much larger affect on your day to day life.

I've heard this trope before, but it doesn't seem true to me. The federal government's day-to-day services include universities (through student loans and grant funding), travel (domestic and international), the quality of food we eat, healthcare regulation, and nearly everything to do with employment.

The local governments seem to focus mostly on K-12 schools, and police/fire; plus some one-off errands like the DMV and liquor laws.

The amount of federal taxes I pay is a life-changing amount if I were to get it back in a single check every year, whereas the state/city taxes of sales+property+stateincome is maybe a quarter as much.

100% of the USDs that the federal government spends originate from the federal government. Money doesn't grow on taxpayers.

In fact, it's the citizens responsibility to return the dollars via taxation... One way to interpret government debt is that money is a claim to the entire economy of the country and thus money does not create real wealth, it just makes real wealth liquid.

Also, "federal" here does not include not include payroll taxes, which are, nonetheless, considered "federal taxes" in any colloquial conception of the term.

Of course, in addition to the lying by omission, the true irony here is that the "lack" of "federal" taxes paid by the masses is more so a symptom of a deeply inequitable economic system than the counterbalancing endorsement of the status quo the OP likely envisions it to be.

Your second paragraph and last sentences of the first paragraph are perfectly on point. If I wasn’t so worried I was saying something wrong, I would have seen this an hour ago and been able to just say what you wrote. As this is the actual crux of the matter.

I totally agree, but people pull this same move when comparing our tax rates to European countries. People frame their arguments in a light most beneficial to their points they are trying to make.

Yes well put. Exactly how it goes.

I think you have it backwards. The extremely rich that might make millions or even billions a year but pay $0 income taxes love to play that game and muddy the water by saying they paid taxes…everyone in these contexts is talking about federal income taxes, not sales tax or property taxes.

How about turn your question around and ask why the top CEOs (especially in tech) pay $0 federal income taxes claim they did pay taxes when they are referencing having paid sales tax, as if not paying sales tax is even a real issue, is in good faith.

I don’t think it’s backwards. I think it’s just that the extremely wealthy and other sympathizers love to play the game any way they can. In certain situations, yes they love to say what you said. In other circumstances, they love to only point out how little so many others pay, if at all.

This points to the larger problem of inequality and how the water is beyond muddy now.

There is no way to do that as a CEO. At best your stock holdings can rise, but your compensation will be taxed. The places where you can earn significant untaxed income are via real estate.

All those CEOs that take $0 or $1 salaries and then do press releases about it, how much do you think they are paying in taxes on that salary?

Although you're totally correct I think you're underselling the complexity of the situation.

On paper, the super rich (and even just merely "very" rich) can even show negative incomes [1] because they can a take very low interest-rate loan (which is in a way kind of tax, but paid to the bank) backed by their assets to pay expenses thus they can show no income and no realized capital gains.

But, if you think about it, the practice is not all that different than taking out a home equity line on a house, for example.

So whomever writes that law better be really careful or else the only ones who are going to get caught in that net are the middle class.

Here is a nice article on the subject. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57383869

[1] They would never actually do that because one needs to harvest that loss. They want to show $0 so they would sell something the balance the negative income out.

Not earning income is a way to avoid income tax.

It might come as a surprise to you but the CEOs that don’t pay income taxes I’m referencing nevertheless receive compensation packages that put them in the 1% of the 1%.

They are tax strategies that aren’t available to the rest of us, otherwise everyone would have a s-Corp/LLC pay themselves $0 salary and take everything they make as a distribution of profit to avoid payroll taxes/Medicare/SS on income, when the little guy does that it’s called tax fraud.

Don't underestimate the inginuity of accountants. There are ways to realize cash flow but show no total compensation.

Shouldn't taxes be thought of as a contribution to some form of spending rather than a purely punitive measure? Why is it not important that 61% of people do not contribute anything to the spending done by the federal government, even if they do contribute to other spending?

Many states receive more federal funds than they contribute in taxes, so according to this mode of argument the population of those states do even worse than contribute nothing.

This is what I said I believe. Are you doubling down on what I said? Like a sibling comment said. The fact that we are confused shows how both the original stat and the technically correct but largely incorrect 43% pay no payroll tax either, are not good statistics. They muddy the water

Per parent comment, those people do contribute to federal spending through payroll and other taxes, even if income taxes make up the largest proportion of revenues.

The fact that you took it that way is evidence of how the original comment is misleading to many people.

I’m not sure how the person took it. I agree the fact that it is taken in some way and I’m not sure which way, is indicative of the misleading quality of the original comment and the comment saying 43% pay no payroll tax (which is only true during the two stimulus years)

61% of people not paying income tax can mean a lot of things. For example, a lot of them don't have to pay income taxes. Children and the unemployed don't pay it.

How about "X% of people paid no tax" which is really the meaning of this.

Here's a page which talks about the effective tax rates of, as far as I can tell, all taxes people in the USA pay:

https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/

This is far more useful for the discussion about how we pay for common goods than "61% of Americans pay no federal income taxes".

(Never heard of ITEP before this, but they claim to be non-partisan, FWIW.)

Nice ressource, if every country had that we could have a common ground on which to discuss wealth and income inequality

We are missing the real juicy bit- top 0.1%

Federal income taxes are the money that funds the federal government. The military, congress, FBI, courts, EPA, etc. Payroll taxes go to entitlement programs, so they are more similar to paying insurance premiums than actually funding the activities of the government.

The funniest part is that a good chunk of the people who pass along this link in grievance are probably in the group that technically pays no income tax, and don't even realize it.

I don't really see how it misleads the argument in a way that would be considered bad faith. But I do agree focusing on the $0 number does seem kind of arbitrary. A better metric might be percentage of the total tax burden paid by the bottom 50% of the income distribution. Maybe that is 0% if you look purely at federal income tax, and maybe it rises to something like 5% if you include all the other taxes you mention. But I don't think it changes the picture significantly.

I've not looked for a new edition of the report but the CBO has put out reports that calculates net tax rates and more than half of the country are not federal net tax payers (this includes all federal taxes.) And more than 40% of them are so much not net payers that it offsets their entire non-federal tax burden. Ultimately a very large portion of Americans don't pay for any of government and government spending and services.

They do pay, they just get more back out. In a country without any redistribution of wealth and a perfectly efficient government everyone would be a net zero contributor to the government.

In practice most countries have a few hubs where most of the wealth is created (typically coastal cities), and the taxes collected there fund the rest in the form of redistribution of wealth.

Nearly everyone in the US lives in a state with a sales tax (only five do not have a state-level sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon.) And, of course, nearly everyone buys something regularly, whether food or clothing or other necessities of life.

It's 100% absurd and untrue to say "a very large portion of Americans don't pay for any of government" when most of us pay something every time we get a box of crackers or put gas in our tanks.

And if you're going to follow up and clarify with a much narrower way that your statement could be taken to be true, then I'd like to know why you opened with "a very large portion of Americans don't pay for any of government" instead of that much more specific -- and much less "the poors are getting a free ride" -- statement.

You need to understand that I'm talking about net taxes. Referencing [0], the bottom 20% of households have a median market income of $15,800. They receive $9,600 in transfers and services. Their pre-tax income is $25,400 and they pay $800 in taxes. States and municipal taxes vary, but even high sales tax states and counties have rates of 15% or less. Let's call it 20% just to be extra generous in the discussion. Take their $24,500 in after tax dollars and spend every bit of it and pay 20% on all transactions. These households have paid $4,900 in non-federal taxes. So their net contribution across all levels of government is $4,900 - $9,600 = $-4,700. On a net basis, they don't pay for any part of the operations of the country at any level because the federal transfers pay for all of their non-federal tax burden.

If you look at the second quintile and do the same math, you also get a negative result. Only at the middle quintile does it even become possible for them to spend so much locally that their local taxes offset the amount in transfers and services.

I stand by my statement that a very large portion of Americans don't pay for any government. Assuming you consider ~40% of Americans to be a very large portion. I didn't say a majority, just a very large portion. Though it is possible that a majority of households don't pay for any government, depending on the specifics of their local tax rates and spending habits. If the middle quintile doesn't spend ALL their money at a local average tax rate of 12.8%, then they don't contribute either.

0. See page 31, table 1 of 2013 Distribution of Household Income and Taxes [pdf], https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...

Because almost everyone who purchases anything pays 'sales tax' and almost all homeowners pay 'property tax,' but the problem we care about is income/capital gains tax evasion.

If that’s the problem that is cared about. Are you saying going after the lower socioeconomic class of America is how to get back those evaded taxes?

The narrative in general for the statistic is about lower socioeconomic people. If this was a good faith caring about tax evasion. Why would the focus be on the people with the least income and wealth?

I don’t think it would be if that was really the problem being cared about.

And yes the sales tax is part of the point. To give nuance to such a simple statistic.

We are going back to a time where the church and nobility are exempt from taxation and the monarch in desperation keeps squeezing the peasants.

Yeah, Brookings or whatever cesspool that made this left out those taxes as part of their narrative.

I included them to counter that narrative and the you RAN with my intent.

EDIT: To that point, you can absorb statistics from an organization but still disagree with their editorializing.

> They read this as those people pay no taxes

Nobody on earth would ever read "not paying federal taxes" as meaning also not paying social security, medicare, sales or property taxes.

Of course not sales tax. However for the rest, yes people would. People are quickly reading the stat. They aren’t thinking deeply or in a nuanced fashion. They aren’t on a forum like this. They are going about their day.

You agree not everyone knows what payroll taxes specifically go toward or that there’s even a separation of federal income taxes and payroll taxes as distinct things, right?

Social Security and Medicare are federal taxes so hopefully some people are aware of that.

This is an odd line of reasoning.

It's like responding to "Joe didn't pay for his main course at the restaurant" with "yeah but he paid for some of the appetizers."

The fault in your logic here is that in your metaphor joe ate the same as everyone else at the restaurant.

The benefits of society as a whole are not equally shared. The wealthiest in society benefit the most from a functioning and stable federal bureaucracy.

> in your metaphor joe ate the same as everyone else at the restaurant.

That's not anywhere in my metaphor.

> The benefits of society as a whole are not equally shared.

This is true but not relevant to my point.

> The wealthiest in society benefit the most from a functioning and stable federal bureaucracy.

This is less likely to be true and also not relevant to my point.

If you’re going to be that pedantic about it, you also never stated that joe ate anything at all, maybe joe paid for apps and just sat there while everyone else ate.

At this point I’m not sure what your point is if its truly your assertion that none of my assumptions were valid. (My assumptions being that we are talking about who assumes responsibility for paying for the benefits of society/governance)

> we are talking about who assumes responsibility for paying for the benefits of society/governance

This has essentially already been decided. The topic is tax avoidance, which I compared to skipping out on a bill that ought to be paid.

It's a pretty standard free rider problem. It doesn't change the problem to point out that the free rider benefits from the ride (which, of course they do) or that they benefit more from it than others, or that they paid unrelated bills.

You’re making a pretty strong assumption that these statistics are a result of tax avoidance. I find it extremely implausible that majority of people who don’t pay income tax are doing so as a result of complex financial schemes. Taking the standard deduction or simply claiming straightforward deductions like the mortgages interest deduction is not tax avoidance when done in the spirit of the law, which, anecdotally, is the case for most middle to low income filers.

I’d need to see some proof before assuming the statistic is a matter of avoidance rather than of explicit tax policy. If you’re claiming people who are in alignment with official tax government policy (again in the spirit not just the letter of the law) are free riders, then we are back to who should assume the responsibility for paying. As stated in my previous post.

> If you’re claiming people who are in alignment with official tax government policy (again in the spirit not just the letter of the law) are free riders, then we are back to who should assume the responsibility for paying. As stated in my previous post.

Sure, I agree with this assessment up to first order. But this is a bit slippery because of second order effects where you can pay to have a favorable tax code created (or at least pay to substantially increase the odds of such a policy being created).

> Taking the standard deduction or simply claiming straightforward deductions like the mortgages interest deduction is not tax avoidance when done in the spirit of the law, which, anecdotally, is the case for most middle to low income filers.

I agree with this.

> I find it extremely implausible that majority of people who don’t pay income tax are doing so as a result of complex financial schemes.

For the short-term Covid-related spike of people not paying due to unemployment and temporary tax credits, sure I agree. In general case, though, the schemes don't have to be very complex and you can just pay people to set them up for you.

Also, the number or percentage of people who don't pay income tax is an indicator of how easy tax avoidance has gotten. That's why that number is quoted. But since the distribution of wealth is so skewed, what really matters in the free rider context is the amount of money not paid into the system.

And for this I don't think it's at all implausible (and is in fact consistent with what we know) to say that the wealthiest Americans pay extremely low income tax rates because of tax avoidance. (Here I am including the creation of favorable tax policy as tax avoidance if it's contrary to the spirit of the US's policy of progressive income tax.)

I guess what’s confusing for me is that the “63% of people don’t pay income taxes” line is usually trotted out to say that the rich are the only ones who pay taxes and everyone is just a welfare queen or something. But it sounds like you are trying to say that it shows that tax avoidance is a real problem and that this a primarily a symptom of the rich being able to hire tax evasion specialists.

If that’s the case then there’s no disagreement from me.

Ah okay, that makes sense then. Sorry about my confusion.

I don't know the motives of the original poster. Since the article was about how the top 10% own ~ 90% of the stock, I assumed the relevance of the income tax figure was that it was related to its impact on wealth inequality.

Perfect response!

Your profile is blank. If you’re up for it. Look at mine and send me an email. Every other comment I saw where I knew the comment was not logically sound but couldn’t quite word it right. You were there already having written a great response.

Thank you for your comment! I’m going to consider reaching out, but I also like keeping my account pseudonymous so I’ll have to figure some things out.

Of course, understand your concern.

I haven’t updated my HN in forever. It is updated now.

If you ever reach out as someone who discovered the community I co-founded or even just try it out. I nor any one else would ever know you are this current handle. Since there’s a few inquires a week and they range a lot.

Do you pay sales tax on purchases? SALT deductions also reduced those paying federal taxes paid when they were still around. Agreed that people misunderstand it quite easily.

Because most people are smart enough to understand that they mean federal income tax. Especially when comparing the entire country, or talking about federal tax policy.

At the Federal level, it is more useful to talk about net taxes of all types. That is, taxes of all types paid to the Federal government (income, excise, payroll/social, etc) after subtracting all transfers and distributions to the taxpayer. This is a more accurate accounting of the situation. It paints a slightly different picture, but not that different.

It turns out that only about 20% of taxpayers send more money to the government than they receive in aggregate across all forms of taxation and transfers. Another 20% of taxpayers roughly pay their own way, providing about as much tax revenue as they receive in transfers. 60% of taxpayers receive more in transfer payments and other distributions than they pay in taxes (not that surprising with things like Social Security).

tl;dr: across all Federal taxes and transfer payments taken as net, 20% of taxpayers are paying taxes that are transferred to 60% of taxpayers.

Individual States have diverse taxation structures, so the net taxpayer statistics likely vary widely.

Several states (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming) don't pay any state tax. I'm sure you could make a statement like "85% of US residents don't pay state tax" that would be true but also be incredibly misleading.

Just to clarify (I believe this is what you were hinting at), they dont pay any state income tax. If you look at sales/property taxes for those states you can see some of them make up for the lack of income tax.

Right, yes, the point is that state taxes can get very nuanced which is why I'm guessing they weren't included in the analysis.

New Hampshire doesn't tax wage income. It does tax unearned income.