Comment & Debate
David N. Mayer. “Wealthy Americans Deserve Real Tax Relief”. Ashbrook Center. October 1999. – taxes on the rich have risen more sharply than for any other income group since 1993. Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, reports that according to the Congressional Budget Office, “those with incomes above $200,000 saw their share of total income taxes rise to 37.2% in 1997 from 29.5% in 1993, although this group represents just 1.5% of all taxpayers. Those with incomes above $1 million increased their share of the total tax burden to 16.6% from 11.3% over the same period, although they represent a scant 0.1% of taxpayers.”
“Tax tyrannies”. Washington Times. 27 Mar. 2008 – Tax tyranny can exist when members of one group are singled out to pay a disproportionate share of the tax because of their religion, ethnic group, gender or other circumstance. Nowadays, this is most often seen in government abusing the idea of progressive tax rates. For instance, in the United States, the top 1 percent of the taxpayers pay 40 percent of the income tax, yet they have only 21 percent of the income. At the same time, the bottom 50 percent of the taxpayers pay only 3 percent of the tax while having 12 percent of the income.
Some politicians want to further increase the tax burden on the top 1 percent while reducing and even eliminating the tax all together on the bottom 50 percent.
When a majority shifts almost all of the tax burden to a small minority who must pay a grossly disproportionate share of their income, it smacks of tax tyranny. Two-dozen countries, many of whose citizens have suffered under the tyranny of communism, have instituted “flat taxes” to avoid this form of tax tyranny.