Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says - New York Times

Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says - New York Times:

The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and their share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and received money back from the government. That so-called negative income tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit, a program that benefits low-income parents who are employed.

Put another way: rich families were the undisputed winners from President Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the earnings scale were not paying much in taxes anyway.

The main article is about how the tax cuts benefited the very rich ... but it's not until you get to the final few paragraphs that you learn that nearly half of Americans pay little or no income tax, while the top 1% pays over 1/3 of all of the taxes collected by the federal government.