Taxing the Richest Won't Raise Enough Revenue

This has been known for years. But in the current political climate it bears repeating.

From the WSJ opinion page today, the following quote:

Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Few of us realize how progressive our income tax is and how much of the largess the government doles out depends on the earnings of so few.