In comments on my post on Rand Paul and David Letterman, some commenters expressed interest in seeing the data on overall federal tax burden, not just the burden of the federal income tax. As it happens, the Congressional Budget Office reports such data. I would reprint their tables but I haven't yet figured out how to do that. So here is the link for 2006 data. Click on their data and you'll get an Excel spreadsheet that shows the following:
. The bottom quintile paid 4.3 percent of income in taxes,
. The top quintile paid 25.8 percent of income in taxes,
. The top decile paid 27.5 percent of income in taxes,
. The top 5 percent paid 29.0 percent of income in taxes, and
. The top 1 percent paid 31.2 percent of income in taxes.
In other words, it's still the case that the higher your income, the higher a percent of your income you pay in taxes.
Data on the Distribution of Federal Taxes and Household Income - Congressional Budget Office
This page contains CBO's most recent estimates of federal effective tax rates (taxes as a percentage of income) across household income groups for the four largest sources of federal revenues--individual income taxes, social insurance (payroll) taxes, corporate income taxes, and excise taxes--as well as the total effective rate for the four taxes combined. The page also contains estimates of average before- and after-tax household income, counts of households, and shares of taxes, income, and households for each income group; information relating to the methodology used to construct the estimates; supplementary estimates for different household types; and a comparison of income and payroll taxes.
