Taxes

How much do the rich pay? Kudlow cites some stats from a Bruce Bartlett piece:

A recent Bruce Bartlett column reports on class warfare charges by the New York Times. Looking at the latest IRS data for 2003, the top 1% of income taxpayers paid 34.3% of personal receipts at the top marginal tax-rate of 35% (which went into effect in July, I believe), though they earned only 16.8% of adjusted gross income.

Inside the top 1% group, the top one-tenth (top 0.1%) paid 15.3% of income taxes. " These 129,000 tax filers earned 7.6% of the income and paid an average tax rate of 23.6%. This came to $114.6 billion -- four times more than all the taxes paid by the 64 million taxpayers in the bottom 50%-- who paid an average tax rate of 2.9%. "