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A comment on The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks. Parent comment

Re:The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U... by vngzs on Monday October 18, 2021 @12:45PM (#28907587)
That CNBC article is unbelievably misleading. If you dig into the sources, it links to the actual report [0] where they state that 80% of households paid federal income or payroll taxes:

> Remember, this reflects only those who pay no federal individual income tax. TPC estimates that while the number of households paying neither payroll nor income taxes also rose significantly, roughly 4 out of every 5 did pay one of these two taxes.

The trick is that "income tax" is used as a technical term in the headline, while the colloquial use of it is quite different (average readers would probably consider their payroll tax to be "income tax").

[0]: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/covid-19-pandemic-dro...

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Re:The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U... by GhostVII on Monday October 18, 2021 @01:07PM (#28907826)
I don't think that is really misleading, at least I wouldn't consider Medicare/social security as a part of my federal income tax. When I think of income tax I think of tax brackets and deductions, not payroll taxes which are deducted before I ever receive any income, and which I never really have to deal with.

Based on the headline, I would have assumed that 57% of people had enough deductions/low enough income to be below the bottom income tax bracket. Which is correct, based on what you said.

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Re:The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U... by vmception on Monday October 18, 2021 @01:14PM (#28907911)
Even as a technical term, income has like 5 different meanings and contexts in the tax code, only sometimes distinguished by adjectives such as "ordinary", "adjusted gross", "modified adjusted gross", etc

So its very easy to use this to your advantage and appeal to emotion, when convenient, or pass tougher tax laws that never affect you, which is even more convenient.

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