TaxVox: the Tax Policy Center blog :: About Those 47 Percent Who Pay “No Taxes.”

TaxVox: the Tax Policy Center blog :: About Those 47 Percent Who Pay “No Taxes.”

by Howard Gleckman on Thu 15 Apr 2010 04:44 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Last June, my colleague Bob Williams posted a TaxVox article that reported 47 percent of American households paid no federal income tax in 2009. Bob was exactly right, but rarely has a bit of data been so misunderstood, or so misused.

Let me explain—repeat actually—what this means: About half of taxpayers paid nofederal income tax last year. It does not mean they paid no tax at all. Many shelled out Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. In fact, only 14 percent of Americans didn’t pay either income or payroll taxes. Some paid property taxes and, it is fair to say, just about all of them paid sales taxes of one kind or another. So to say they pay no taxes is flat wrong.

However, this class warfare-like rhetoric plays to a perception that the income tax is a chump tax: Only hard-working folks like us pay it. The welfare queens don’t. The super-rich don’t. It is a powerful emotional argument. It is also flat wrong.

So who are these folks who pay no federal income taxes? Mostly, they are people who don’t make very much money. Many are elderly: Think a widow living only on Social Security benefits. Others are parents earning less than $20,000. Only about 5 percent are non-elderly households making more than $20,000.

It is no accident, btw, that the number of people not paying income tax was so high in 2009. You may have noticed that we’ve had a recession lately. And here is a powerful insight: When people’s incomes decline so too does their income tax (at least most of the time). At the same time, many working families have benefited from temporary tax cuts aimed at boosting the economy, and as a result some did not pay income taxes last year. As the economy improves and those tax cuts expire, it should also be no surprise that the share of people who don't pay income taxes will likely shrink from half last year to less than 40 percent by 2012.

There is, however, another reason why some people don’t pay. For decades, both Democratic and Republican governments have made conscious policy decisions to remove low-income working families from the income tax rolls. And, guess what, sometimes government policy works exactly as intended. That’s what happened this time. ...