The current presidential races continually bring up the issue of taxes.  McCain and Obama have very, very different views on taxes and I strongly recommend you research both.  I also recommend you look into economists’ proposed theories on how taxes affect various aspects of our economy.

Personally, I’m not sure how much sense it makes to increase taxes on the people who create jobs, especially when jobs are being cut daily and our economy is in the toilet.  It sounds nice to give a tax break to 95% of Americans, heck, I fall into that category.  There’s just one problem, families in the bottom 40% of income earners, incomes below $36,300, typically pay no income tax. So, if 95% of income earners will get lower taxes, but only 60% actually pay income tax, we’re left to assume that the other 35% will actually receive a check from the government.  This check will come from the top 5% of income earners, whose taxes will be raised.  Isn’t this the same as income redistribution?

Take a look at what percent of income earners pay what percent of income taxes collected:

Top 1% pay 33.7%
Top 5% pay 54.1%
Top 10% pay 65.8%
Top 25% pay 83.6%
Top 50% pay 96.4%
Bottom 50% pay 3.6%

50% of income earners pay 96.4% of all income taxes while the other 50% pay only 3.6%. And that top 5%, they already pay 54.1% of all income tax. Is that fair?

For more info, see: taxfoundation.org