It you don’t like paying taxes, you’d better find some rich people.
The team at the Fraser Institute has dissected the latest tax data to see if they could shed some light on the belief that the rich don’t pay taxes or at least their fair share. In their findings, that so-called urban legend is just that a legend or a myth.
The top quartile or 20 per cent of the income-earning population – those with incomes exceeding $243,000 a year – paid roughly 62 per cent of all the personal income taxes collected in this country, according to the report. The folks in the bottom quartile – that represents incomes under $60,000 a year – contributed less than one per cent of personal incomes to public treasuries.
For the highest income earners, they accounted for 46 per cent of all the T4 income in Canada which is considerably lower than the 62 per cent they paid of all the taxes. The bottom earners saw their ratio of income-to-taxes reversed, earning five per cent of the T4 gross receipts and paying seven-tenths of one percent of personal incomes taxes.
