The IRS recently released a document showing that the 400 largest tax returns had an average income of I am not kidding $344,759,000 in 2007!!!!
OK, I get a hunch that the above number stunned the hell out of you like it did me. What I found more surprising was that their average tax rate is only 16.62% (I'm assuming federal only) and that these 400 returns are 1.59% of all the gross income recorded in 2007.
See the chart for yourself
http://www.tax.com/...
So, let's put this in perspective. Compared to the rest of these muckety-mucks, if we have to also include our payroll taxes as a percent of income, these guys are getting away with, heck I don't even know to call it robbery but at 16.62% average tax rate, are they really paying their fair share here?
And since I see that the average rate dropped from 22% to 17% under Bush, can we conclude that trickle down does not work unless you're in the top 400? The increase in the top 400 from an average of $47 million to $345 million between 1992 and 2009 while the average federal taxes paid by this group dropped from 26.4% down to 16.7% shows we have lived in a world where the creme de la creme have enriched and expanded heavily in relation to the crumbs that Clinton and Bush gave us.
Thoughts?