If I were a full time blogger

I would write something like this informative post at Get Rich Slowly.  Alas, I do not receive a salary to blog, and I do not have twelve hours of free time to commit to the same level of fact finding that the author does.   Motivated by a desire to have a basic knowledge of our tax code, its effect on government revenue, distribution of tax, and how we compare to other countries, the author compiled an informative FAQ and added nice graphs for good measure.  Here are some key take aways, if you don’t feel like going to the article itself:

1. Of the OECD member countries, we pay the fifth lowest amount of taxes as a percentage of GDP.  There are two middle-income countries (Turkey and Mexic0) below, and several above, us.
2. 86.1% of government revenue (not government spending) comes from taxes on individuals and estates.  These taxes are the personal income tax, Social Security and Medicare taxes (payroll taxes), the estate tax, and gift taxes.
3. The top 1% of earners pay an effective federal tax rate of ~23%.; the bottom 50% pay approximately 3%.  For the country as a whole, the figure is around 13 percent.

I had recently stopped reading Get Rich Slowly because I feel that my personal finances are under control; if they continue to write more informative pieces like this, I’ll have to add them to my blogroll.  The author concludes by saying, “Based on my research, U.S. taxes actually seem relatively low, both historically and in relation to other countries. I am not arguing that we should have higher taxes. Nor am I arguing we should have lower taxes. I’m just relaying the facts.”  I, of course, am arguing that we should have higher taxes, but I do agree that those are just the facts.

There are pretty pretty informative graphs after the jump.

The sardonic captions are mine; the graphs are from Get Rich Slowly.

The poor pay more so the rich can pay less (and foreigners can make up the difference)

More evidence that we have a lot in common with developing countries