The convenient and inconvenient truth about who pays income tax

[BlueCheeseAgain]

One of the big complaints from Republicans about student loan forgiveness goes something like this comment from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), "Asking plumbers and carpenters to pay off the loans of Wall Street advisors and lawyers isn’t just unfair. It's also bad policy." Basically, they're saying, forgiving student loans makes average Americans pay the debts of people who are on average better off.

So what's the counterargument when someone makes this argument?

Well, the true answer may not be that palatable. Basically, it's to say this:

The average American will be paying for only a small amount of this forgiveness, because the average American only pays for a small amount of anything the federal government does.

The truth is that a very large majority of income taxes are paid by those in the higher income brackets. The top 1% pay 38% of all income taxes. The top 5% pay 59%. The top quarter pay 86%. The bottom 50% pay 3%. So by and large, the plumbers and carpenters won't be paying for this forgiveness-- because generally, they don't pay for federal programs in general. (Unless, of course, they're very successful plumbers and carpenters, but I suspect that's not who Kelly had in mind.)

(Yes, it's true that the bottom 50% pays other kinds of taxes, like Social Security taxes, sales taxes, etc. But it's federal income tax that will pay for this. Yes, it's also true that a big reason the rich pay so much in taxes is because they make so much money. That's a separate issue.)

Is that a good answer for Democrats, though? Probably not. It's not smart to tell people that they're not really contributing that much in taxes. Perhaps we can phrase it differently-- since the rich make most of the money, they pay most of the taxes, and in the end, it's them who will be paying for this.

What do you think?

[delisen]

1. Interesting. We need more upward mobility. nt

[Raven123]

2. I wouldn't make that argument.

[BSdetect]

3. Sadly true stats. Despite what many think.

[Victor_c3]

4. Not to mention that those lawyers likely earn more than $125k

And people in those income brackets won’t benefit from student loan forgiveness.

[yonder]

5. The argument I've used when someone brings up the

"wealthy pay all of the taxes" claim goes something like this:

"You're describing a system that has become so unbalanced, in terms of wealth distribution, that we see an increasingly smaller middle class, a much larger number of people living in poverty and the wealthy raking in obscenely increasing wealth that what do you expect?....of course the wealthy pay a larger share. With a balanced system, the middle class would and should share more of the tax burden".

That usually shuts them up.