Taxes

I just got out of my Monday night Finance class, and the instructer brought up some great points about taxing the rich, and why people complain that the tax cuts benefit the rich.

It is basicly because the rich are the ones who pay most of the taxes, so obviously if there are tax cuts, they would benefit. This seems very intuitive in hindsight, and when you look at the numbers it is pretty annoying.

To put this in better perspective, or to define who the "rich" are, he showed us a breakdown, and I have looked on the internet and found the same one on www.ntu.org

For Tax Year 2006 (AGI)
Top 1% make over $388,806 and pay 39.89% of the taxes

Top 5% make over $153,542 and pay 60.14% of the taxes

Top 10% make over $108,904 and pay 70.79% of the taxes

Top 25% make over $64,702 and pay 86.27% of the taxes

Top 50% make over $31,987 and pay 97.01% of the taxes

Bottom 50% make <$31,987 and pay 2.99% of the taxes

Source: Internal Revenue Service

So, if you and your spouse combined make more than $31,987, you are in the top 50%, and you are one of the "evil rich" that would benefit from the extension of the Bush tax cuts.