The "Fair Share" is Increasing. Shouldn't Liberals be Happy?

Liberals always complain that The Rich are not paying their "fair share" of taxes. Whatever that share is , it seems to be increasing every year. 

                        Share of Tax Burden by Quintile

The Rich Pay More

No matter how many times the fact-free Democrat party says it, The Rich are paying more of what they earn in taxes.

High Earners Don't Pay Their Fair Share (Continued)

Envy and resentment are emotions not readily diminished by facts. Nonetheless  . . . . .

High Earners Part II

In my previous post, I referenced the IRS report on high earning Americans. Not only are the top 400 earners ephemeral (almost all of them won't be Top 400 earners more than once), but they also account for a huge amount of the income tax collected by the IRS.

Tax year 2010

Earners                           Number of Filers            Tax Paid          

Top 400                               400                             $19.1B

Bottom 50%                        67.5 million                $22.4B

In other words, 400 (not 400 thousand) tax filers pay about the same amount of tax as $68 MILLION people who earn the least (and of course, there are millions more that didn't have enough income to file).

So when someone contends that the Super Rich are not paying their fair share . . . . What would that fair share be?

Understanding Fair Share

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what the term Fair Share means. Many people are under the mistaken impression that it is some fixed number that seems reasonable. That would be wrong. The definition of Fair Share is a percentage of the Federal income tax that is some amount higher than what is being paid today. Thus the following.

Percentage of Federal Income Tax Paid by Top 1% Earners

1979    19%  [Not Fair Share]
1989    23%  [Not Fair Share]
1999    37%  [Not Fair Share]
2009    42%  [Not Fair Share]

So for 2013, Fair Share might be, say, 45%. By 2019 it will be 50% . And so on. It's important to understand this definition. Otherwise we will continue to have fruitless arguments over what a Fair Share really is.