Do the rich — as President Obama seems to think — fail to pay their fair share? Gerald Prante of the Tax Foundation recently took a good, hard look look at IRS tax data, and some of the results are pasted in the table below.

Yes, Mr. Obama, the rich do pay their share. The top 1% of Americans really do pay 40% of all taxes and also pay a higher percentage of their income. At 22.45%, they pay nearly double the rate of the average taxpayer, who pays 12.68%. The bottom half of all taxpayers contribute less than 3% to the tax pool and has an effective tax rate of only 3%! (It should also be remembered that these numbers reflect only those Americans who filed tax returns; if you consider the not insignificant number of Americans who do not bother to file a return, the burden upon the rich would appear even bigger.) Read the rest of this entry »