Robin Hood and the Friar’s Tax Rebate

If you should ever decide to go to the website of the IRS ( www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html  ), you will find a wealth of statistics on the U.S. taxpaying population.  The last year listed is 2005.  Now you may question the sanity of anyone voluntarily glancing at these numbers, but you do get some interesting results.  To begin with, there were a tad more than 90 million individual returns filed that year.  Of these filers, roughly 68 million had taxable income (after credits) of $75,000 or less.  On this income, this taxpaying group paid cumulatively $179.6 Billion in taxes.  If it sounds like a lot to you, consider this.  In the current rush to provide aid to the economy, our wonderful legislators decided to return over $150 Billion to taxpayers; most of this going to lower income earners.  Assuming that 2007 is similar (and there is no reason assume otherwise), this means that net of this tax rebate, roughly 2/3rds of all taxpayers will not owe any taxes.

I find it hard to understand why so many people think the tax system unfairly favors the wealthy, or the near wealthy.  Robin Hood and Friar Tuck could not do better if they tried.