Teabagger Delusions: Federal Taxes
A Happy Fourth of July to all readers, and a Happy Birthday to the United States. To celebrate the holiday, WC invites you to examine a few of the complaints of those zealous jingoists, the Teabaggers.
The Teabaggers’ biggest complaint seems to be that they are paying too much in taxes, and specifically federal taxes. As it turns out, that’s not the problem. The problem is that the wealthiest aren’t paying enough. According to the Tax Policy Center, part of the Brookings Institution, far too many wealthy Americans pay no taxes at all.
- There are 78,000 tax filers with incomes of $211,000 to $533,000 who will pay no federal income taxes this year.
- There are 24,000 households with incomes of $533,000 to $2.2 million with zero income tax liability.
- There are 3,000 tax filers with incomes above $2.2 million with the same federal income tax liability as most of those with incomes barely above the poverty level.
WC recognizes that rationality isn’t the strongest part of Teabagger thinking, but a big chunk of the federal deficit would go away if wealthy Americans hadn’t manipulated the tax code to exclude them.
The Teabaggers’ second biggest complaint seems to be that their hard-earned pay goes for social programs for deadbeats. Once again, reality intrudes. Federal giveaways to the middle class are overwhelmingly the biggest federal giveaway. Specifically, the tax exemption for retirement funds, the tax exemption for health care and the tax exemption for mortgage interest. In the following graph, the top three lines are “indirect” federal benefits; the bottom lines are direct federal payments.
Federal Largesse
Unfortunately, the Dunning-Kruger effect operates here and makes it difficult to impossible for Teabaggers to grasp these points. And the handful of obscenely wealthy citizens who fund the Tea Party will do their best to obfuscate the Teabaggers. And so the circus will continue, whatever the real facts.
