I am always amazed when I read letters like Monday’s, “Taxing highest earners is wrong,” which argue that the rich are paying too much income tax. Arguments that because the rich create jobs for the rest of us we should give them a bigger tax break are questionable at best and, if taken to a logical extreme, demand that we should not tax the rich at all. That way they would have more money to hire us workers as butlers, maids and gardeners for their massive estates.
The facts are that the rich don’t pay nearly their fair share of taxes. The poor may not pay income tax, but they pay a proportionally larger percentage of their income in sales tax than the rich, in addition to contributing to Social Security and Medicare. The top 400 richest families in the United States earn 93 percent of their income from investments that are currently taxed at only 15 percent. I know that is a lot lower income tax rate than I pay while working 40 hours a week.
Today the rich are richer than ever. The top 1 percent earns 23 percent of all reported income and owns 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. In the past 10 years they are the only group that has seen significant economic gain. In that same time period most of us, myself included as an owner of a small business, have seen no real increase in personal wealth.
Are the rich taxed too much? No, they should pay more of their fair share. After all, they are the ones who gain the most by having a stable economic and political environment that their taxes helps to buy. That keeps the rest of us content while the rich enjoy all of the benefits of their wealth.
Doug Beyerlein
Mill Creek
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