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Everybody's rich!

September 14, 2009

You always hear that only "the rich" benefited from the Bush-era tax cuts. According to figures from the Tax Foundation, that means everybody is rich:

The Tax Policy Blog notes:

Every tax rate was reduced. Now, about half of the dollar savings from the tax cuts went to the top 10% of taxpayers (when you include various credits and other tax changes included as part of the packages), but that's probably because the top 10% pay over 70% of all income taxes. Those on the left side of the aisle may disagree with that approach to tax cuts, preferring targeted relief for lower-income individuals, but it's disingenuous to say that the 2001-03 tax cuts only went to "the wealthiest few."

It's not just "tax cuts for the wealthy" that have dug the fiscal hole, and, as Peter Pappas notes, it will take more than taxing the rich to get us out.