What Does Fair Share (in Taxes) Mean?

By Richard Winchester

What do left-wing Democrats such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders have in mind when they demand that wealthy Americans pay their “fair share” in taxes? Demanding that the rich pay their fair share in taxes is part of the age-old Democrat Party playbook that uses class warfare to acquire and hold power.

It conveys the presumption that the big-money types are unfairly gaming the tax code so they don’t have to pony-up to Uncle Sam’s coffers on April 15th. Sadly, this ploy often succeeds, probably because leftists are seldom asked to specify what they mean when they demand somebody pay a fair share in taxes.

Thomas Sowell took a step in the right direction in an essay posted on Nationalreview.com last October 21st. He opened by noting that people who demand the rich pay their fair share do not specify what either the rich or fair share mean. Essentially, Sowell stated, fair share means, simply, “more.”........ One place to turn for factual information on who pays how much percent of the total in income taxes is a report posted on the American Spectator’s blog on May 6, 2015. The data come from 2014, and are reported by the Tax Policy Center, which is the creation of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two entities not known for right-wing sentiments.

According to the IRS, in 2014 the top 1% of all income earners paid 45.7% of all federal income taxes, but earned 17.1% of all income in the U.S. The top 20% paid 83.9% of all federal income taxes, after earning 51.9% of all income in America. The middle 20% of income earners – who the American Spectator claims are the true middle class in America – paid 5.9% of all federal income taxes, but earned 14.8% of all income.......
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My Take - So then....since the top 20% pay 83.9% - almost all the federal income tax - the question we have to as is this: What amount do the remaining 80% pay?  The middle 20% pay 5.9% leaving 11.2% for the remaining 60%.   And worse yet - we already know somewhere between 45% and 51% of the U.S. population pay no federal income taxes at all.   Hmmmmm....do they have a fair share?  Sure!  They get a fair share of everyone else's tax.