In my last column “The Democrat Big Lie on taxation,” I debunked the claim that the rich don’t pay their fair share of the taxes. A reader’s online comment grudgingly conceded my point but sidestepped it with a counter argument about unfair income distribution. Had I more space I’d have dealt with that then, so let’s do it here.
He said: “These numbers were telling but how? The top 1% have 2 1⁄2 times the share of income of the bottom 50%. The top half have more than eight times the share of the bottom half. No wonder half the country wants the federal government to facilitate wealth transfer and better opportunities.
Of course, poor schools and big government will not fix this problem, but the income statistics are more troubling than the taxpaying numbers.” While accurately stating my statistics he was apparently unaware of how income distribution data has been misrepresented by others. When Democrats, leftists and media liberals intentionally exaggerate income distribution, they torture the data with misrepresentations of effective income from the top to the bottom.
In the report I cited, the IRS uses “adjusted gross income” (AGI) This is income before taxes which is significantly higher than the after-tax income of those in the upper categories. Used as a measure of income distribution this greatly widens the income gap. Those in the bottom 50% pay very little or nothing in income taxes.
(Many who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit have no tax .