Chart of the Day 03-11-2010
Posted: March 11th, 2010, 6:16 pm
This should scare the shit out of anyone who continues to pay ever larger amounts of Federal Income Tax. This 35% has absolutely no incentive to vote for anything other than larger entitlements for which they will not pay a penny. This is a political strategy to create a permanently-dependent populace that will always vote Democrat. Wonder what an amnesty would do to these percentages?
Over the past two decades, Washington lawmakers have increasingly turned to the tax code to deliver social benefits, incentivize behaviors, and funnel money to targeted groups, which they always refer to as "helping the middle class." These measures have not only added complexity to an already Byzantine tax system, they have also eliminated the income tax obligation for millions of tax filers and their families. As a result, a record 51.6 million tax filers—36 percent of all filers—had little or no connection with the basic costs of government in 2008. Tax years 2009 and 2010 are likely to produce a number of non payers equal to or greater than in 2008 because of Obama's new tax credits targeted at lower- and middle-income taxpayers. As the number of refundable tax credits continues to grow, more and more tax filers are seeing the IRS as a source of income, not something to which taxes are paid. The consequences of these trends deserve a broader national discussion than either party in Washington seems willing to engage in."