We’ve all heard the lines: tax the rich more or I don’t want to work overtime because the government just takes it all.
The underlying message here is …no one wants to pay more taxes. But what is the reality about who pays what when it comes to funding government? The Fraser Institute set out to assess that question and here’s what they found.
The top 20-percent of income earners – the rich – pay a lot of taxes. Roughly two-thirds of all the taxes. 20% pays 66% of the income tax and just under 60% of all taxes when you include sales tax and so on.
At the other end of the scale, the bottom 20-percent of the population pays less than one-percent of all the income taxes. 20% pays 0.7%. That goes up to 1.7-percent when other taxes get thrown in.
Now, here’s what they earn. High-income people generate about 50-percent of all the income earned in the country and pay 66-percent of the income tax. The bottom 20-percent earn almost five percent of all income and pay less than two-percent of the national tax bill.
