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0 points9887473y ago0 comments

Poor people already pay next to nothing in taxes - the bottom 60% of society, making less than $50k only contributes 7% of total tax revenue from income taxes, while 0.3% of those making more than $1M per year contributes 27%. [1]

I think the US has pretty good revenue structure in that regard. In my country 62% of federal budget comes from sales taxes (e.g. 23% VAT), which disproportionately affects poor people.

[1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/january/feder...

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greedo3y ago

Your first sentence ignores what you say in the second. In the US, poor people pay a significant portion of their income in sales tax which is regressive.

988747OP3y ago

Yes, I kind of missed that. On the other hand, sales tax in the US is very low compared to European VAT (0-7% vs 18-25% VAT), so it's much smaller issue.

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Beldin3y ago

I would suggest to think of this not in terms of contribution to the whole, but percentage of ($income - $housing - $food - $stdxpenses). With $stdxpenses covering standard living expenses including energy, water, basic insurance, basic commute.

I would be somewhat surprised (rather flabbergasted) if rich folks paid anywhere close to the percentage that poor people do.

In other words: if you want to compare by measuring contribution, measure tax rate to what's left for that individual's personal use.

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