Taxes and the Poor...

It has been circulating for some time with mounting rage that there are some lucky duckies who are getting a free ride, because they do not pay income tax. You hear it a lot, "Everyone needs to pay in to have some skin in the game!". It has become near ubiquitous in conservative circles that it would be better to increase the tax burden on the middle class and working poor, then to raise even a dime on high wage earners.


Ezra Klein does the work on this issue showing why exactly the poor are not savaged by income tax by design. It is endlessly pointed out that payroll taxes (SS, Medicare, Medicaid) fall disproportionately on the poor:

A new report (pdf) from the Tax Policy Center breaks it down. In 2011, about 46 percent of households won’t pay income taxes. For about half of them, the standard provisions of the income tax wiped out their liability. If you don’t make any money but you take a standard deduction and have a few dependents, you’re not going to pay any income tax. Roberton Williams, one of the report’s authors, gives the example of “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400. They get an $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700, and that takes their liability to zero. As he says, “the basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.”

So to reiterate, the reason the poor do not "pay" income tax, is because of credits that wipe out their tax liability. Or better yet, because they are fucking poor.

-Cheers