I've been in a couple recent discussions about income taxes with some
random folks recently, and the people I've talked to all seem to
believe that under the Bush administration either the taxes have
increased, or that taxes have been reduced only for the wealthy, or
that taxes for the wealthy have been reduced while the taxes for the
poor have increased.
Of course this is an easy one to check out as the tables are readily
available at the
IRS web site.
Here's the income tax from the IRS 1040 Tax Table, filing single.
I've choosen the years 1998 and 2006, because the former is positioned
six years into the eight-year Clinton administration and the latter is
positioned six years into the eight-year Bush administration.
Taxable
Income | 1998 Tax | 2006 Tax | Percent
Change |
| $ 10,000 | $ 1,504.00 | $ 1,126.00 | -25.1 % |
| 20,000 | 3,004.00 | 2,626.00 | -12.6 % |
| 30,000 | 5,112.00 | 4,126.00 | -19.3 % |
| 40,000 | 7,912.00 | 6,564.00 | -17.0 % |
| 50,000 | 10,712.00 | 9,064.00 | -15.4 % |
| 60,000 | 13,512.00 | 11,564.00 | -14.4 % |
| 70,000 | 16,570.00 | 14,064.00 | -15.1 % |
| 80,000 | 19,670.00 | 16,739.00 | -14.9 % |
| 90,000 | 22,770.00 | 19,539.00 | -14.2 % |
| 100,000 | 25,855.00 | 22,325.00 | -13.6 % |
Note that all the tax rates have gone down, and the average reduction
is 16.16% (!!!). That's quite significant. And with
respect to the present day, the tax rates used to be an average of
19.27% higher. The greatest reduction was for the lowest income
level, where the income tax used to be 33.51% higher.
And note that the four largest tax rate reductions are at the five
lowest income levels.
(What's with the glitch at $20,000.00? Probably a correction; the
1998 tax rate at $20,000.00 was already the lowest rate of these
numbers, lower than the $10,000.00 rate.)
Actual taxes will be even less today because of things like the child
tax credits, which GWB introduced.
So yeah, income taxes are significantly reduced over the last eight
years, they're reduced more for the poor than the wealthy, and it's a very
good thing... And, of course, most people will believe the exact
opposite.
