[AEI] This is an updated and revised version of a CD post from last year that generated nearly 300 comments because of the controversial nature of the topic ‐ whether "the rich" pay their "fair share" of taxes or not ‐ so I expect another lively discussion this year!The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released its annual report titled "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013." In that publication, the CBO provides detailed data on American households for each income quintile in 2013 for: a) average household "market income" (includes labor income, business income, income from capital gains, and retirement/pension income), b) average household transfer payments (payments and benefits from federal, state and local governments including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)), and c) average federal taxes paid by households (including income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes). Some of the key findings of the CBO analysis are displayed in the table above, with the data organized by household income quintiles. The data in the first four rows above appear in the CBO report (from Tables 1 and 3), and rows 5-8 above have been calculated separately based on data from the first four rows in the table.
Scott Greenberg and John Olsen of The Tax Foundation recently summarized some of the key findings of the CBO report in their post "Are the Rich Paying Their Fair Share Yet?", here are their main conclusions: