Sorry for not stating the source initially. My number came from here, and I suspect their numbers come from the IRS as shown in a preceding comment.
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.htmlContrary to popular opinion, "the evil rich" carry this country, not only in productive output but also in providing the plurality of warm blood from which Washington feeds.
In a more fair world, perhaps the poor should pay all the taxes, for they haven't contributed to society as much as the rich (indeed the wealth of the rich is [usually] a direct indication of the value provided to society in the marketplace).
I'm sorry wha, they carry the country in productive output? As in the 5% of people you claim are paying all the taxes are also producing everything? As in they themselves are producing it? Or they are the ones with the capital to finance paying other people to produce the machinery and create the infrastructure that will then be used by the rest of the country to produce things? Pretty fine distinction between the two.
Can you define contribution? If a poor person works 8 hours a day producing X numbers of widget A for a rich person, he is inherently profitable or he would be fired. He has thus generated both a useful good for society and a profit for a rich person. So far he sounds pretty productive and contributing.
Now the poor person goes home after buying some gas from Corporation W, eats the food his wife shopped for at Store Y, and watches the TV he bought at Store Z.
At the end of the year after he has paid all his taxes, rent, insurance, bought all his clothes and food and cars, electronics, gas, etc. he finds he has 0 physical dollars (though he owns some property).
Thus 100% of his "pay" has returned to the system through both taxes and purchases, as well as creating goods for society and generating profit for a rich person. That sounds like he has contributed a lot to me, although the tax portion itself might not be that large, he has literally given more than everything back.
Meanwhile the rich person has used their capital to create more wealth for themselves, paid 15% (oh right, capital gains taxes, not income taxes!) on it, merely transferred the poor person(s) production to society and likely not bought much more than the poor person (excepting perhaps a few luxuries which slush money around a much smaller more monied pool).
That is a very specific and non-extensible example obviously, but it makes clear how ridiculous it is to tout numbers like income taxes, but if you insist:
2009 US Federal Budget -- $1.21 trillion - Individual income tax
$949.4 billion - Social Security and other payroll taxes
$339.2 billion - Corporate income tax
$172.2 billion -- Misc lumped taxes
Even if we ignore the fact that
rich people do not make most of their money from income, but rather from capital gains...
Income taxes make up less than half the budget yet it is 100% of the focus of people crying foul for poor rich people paying out. Hey look payroll taxes make up almost as much as individual income taxes, obviously the rich must pay most of that too right? Except that the payroll tax is capped on the first $100,000 of your income. So if you made 50,000,000 dollars last year, you paid taxes on $100,000 for social security. Suddenly rich people don't seem like they're paying as much tax when half of what goes to the govt is mostly subsidized by the middle class.
Blah blah blah. Anyway, I don't really want to get too into this (I'm not going to bring up state and local/sales taxes), but these juvenile statesments about how we should all be on our knees sucking off the rich because they're our saviors are really ridiculous, and it needs some saying so.
