Tax the rich! Wait, you mean that includes a teacher and a policeman?

Ryan Streeter

Are you persuaded by Obama's view that we should raise taxes on the wealthy to fix our fiscal problems?

Veronique de Rugy writes at The Corner today:

The president must know that that the top 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 38 percent of federal income taxes (before payroll taxes) and the top 10 percent pay 70 percent.

And remember, the top 10 percent isn’t the so-called rich that the president would like you to have in mind. As my colleague Jason Fichtner told me yesterday, “A tax return with an Adjusted Gross Income of $114k would be in the top 10 percent. That means that a teacher and a cop each making $60k married to each other and filing a joint return would be in the top 10 percent.” He added:

Also, from an equity standpoint, the ‘tax burden’ as a share of total federal income taxes for the wealthy is near its highest in decades. For the top 1 percent, the tax share reached a high of 40.42 percent in 2007 but a low in 1987 of 24.81 percent. The top 1 percent paid less of the total share of taxes during the Clinton years. If President Obama wants to go back to the Clinton days, the middle-class and the poor will have to pay more in taxes.