The rich might get better value on their deductions but they still get soaked more in taxes overall.


The top-earning 1 percent of Americans will pay nearly half of the federal income taxes for 2014
Top 20% of Earners Pay 84% of Income Tax
And the bottom 20%? They get paid by Uncle Sam.

As they mentioned, Warren Buffett famously bragged for years that he pays less in taxes than his secretary. The rich get such value on deductions, loopholes, capital gains rates, etc. that they can avoid taxes overall.
I'm in the bottom 20%...my uncle Sam has never even sent me a birthday card, he sure hasn't ever paid me a dime of assistance. Has Trump ever taken public funds for his projects? Hmmmm.

Another fail, Dimitri.

I think it was a lower % not the amount of money

if the rich didn't take all of the money, there would be a larger middle class and they would pay more taxes; at this point, the rich have made most people into poor people and why should poor people pay more taxes when they're poor?

I have two opinions on this... 1. the tax code rate for capital gains was around 80% 40 years ago and now it's 15%; that's money for doing nothing 2. all improvements in automation and technology have driven down wages and the benefits of this have all gone to the top either in CEO pay or money made from increases in the stock market

I'm sure I've heard him say both, but perhaps he just misspoke. In writing, he does say she pays a higher tax rate.

An extraordinarily simplistic and misleading discussion of tax laws. They very cleverly point out the disparity between the benefits of tax deductions between those with annual incomes over $400K and those below, but neglect to mention what fraction of the total tax payments each group provides.

Also suffers from the implied perspective that all the money actually belongs to the government and it's the government's right and duty to determine how much of it you get to have...

Through out the history of humanity the game has not changed, the poor will get poorer and the rich, well T-time is 10:00am sharp after brunch and mimosas.

Getting soaked is a crock of BS. They're paying often times 20% effective tax rates.

And when income and wealth inequality is as bad as it is today, what you're pointing out points to how ridiculous the economic system is when almost half of Americans pay no federal income taxes and still see their effective income drop over the last four decades, while the rich have experienced steady income increases during that time.

IE, the inequality is so great, even if you literally don't have people pay taxes, it's still resulting in growing wealth inequality.

And I'm sure you're gonna claim that I'm suggesting pure income/wealth equality is what we want, which I'm not. However, it is absolutely essential to a functioning market economy that wealth and income inequality do not become too great, as that was one of the contributing factors to the Great Depression. If the economic lower class does not have money to purchase goods and services the businesses owned by the rich produce, those businesses will inevitably decline.