General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If You Are A Baby Boomer - the real reason YOU SHOULD BE FURIOUS over CPI cuts: [View all]reteachinwi
(579 posts)How do you get that FICA taxes 'helped keep other taxes low'?
Income taxes went the other way. The personal income tax slipped from 7.8 percent of the economy to 7.3 percent, with most of the decline enjoyed by people in the top 1 percent of incomes. The big drop was in the corporate income tax, which fell from 4 percent of the economy to 1.2 percent. Notice that the corporate income tax fell by 2.8 percentage points, an amount almost entirely offset by a 2.4 percentage point increase in Social Security taxes.
The effect has been to ease the taxes of the wealthy, while burdening the vast majority of workers. Considering how highly ownership of stocks is concentrated, the benefit of those lower corporate taxes went overwhelmingly to the top 1 percent and, especially, the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. Considering that the Social Security tax is capped, most of the burden of the increased payroll tax went to the bottom 90 percent.
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/05/04/social-security-is-not-going-broke/
I'm glad I didn't hire you to prepare my tax return. Do you know tax law?