Here's what's really going on...
the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.

Aha, we are told: The rich paid more taxes because they made a greater share of the money. That is true. The top 1% earned 22% of all reported income. But they also paid a share of taxes not far from double their share of income. In other words, the tax code is already steeply progressive.

We also know from income mobility data that a very large percentage in the top 1% are "new rich," not inheritors of fortunes. There is rapid turnover in the ranks of the highest income earners, so much so that people who started in the top 1% of income in the 1980s and 1990s suffered the largest declines in earnings of any income group over the subsequent decade, according to Treasury Department studies of actual tax returns. It's hard to stay king of the hill in America for long.

The most amazing part of this story is the leap in the number of Americans who declared adjusted gross income of more than $1 million from 2003 to 2006. The ranks of U.S. millionaires nearly doubled to 354,000 from 181,000 in a mere three years after the tax cuts.

This is precisely what supply-siders predicted would happen with lower tax rates on capital gains, dividends and income. The economy and earnings would grow faster, which they did; investors would declare more capital gains and companies would pay out more dividends, which they did; the rich would invest less in tax shelters at lower tax rates, so their tax payments would rise, which did happen.

The idea that this has been a giveaway to the rich is a figment of the left's imagination. Taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled to $274 billion in 2006 from $136 billion in 2003. No President has ever plied more money from the rich than George W. Bush did with his 2003 tax cuts. These tax payments from the rich explain the very rapid reduction in the budget deficit to 1.9% of GDP in 2006 from 3.5% in 2003.

This year, thanks to the credit mess and slower growth, taxes paid by the rich may fall and the deficit will rise. (The nonstimulating tax rebates will also hurt the deficit.) Mr. Obama proposes to close this deficit by raising tax rates on the rich to their highest levels since the late 1970s. The very groups like the Congressional Budget Office and Tax Policy Center that wrongly predicted that the 2003 investment tax cuts would cost about $1 trillion in lost revenue are now saying that repealing those tax cuts would gain similar amounts. We'll wager it'd gain a lot less.

If Mr. Obama does succeed in raising tax rates on the rich, we'd also wager that the rich share of tax payments would fall. The last time tax rates were as high as the Senator wants them -- the Carter years -- the rich paid only 19% of all income taxes, half of the 40% share they pay today. Why? Because they either worked less, earned less, or they found ways to shelter income from taxes so it was never reported to the IRS as income.

The way to soak the rich is with low tax rates, and last week's IRS data provide more powerful validation of that proposition.

The rich really don't pay all of those taxes. They get so many loopholes, it decreases the amount that they were originally quoted to pay.

those numbers are from the IRS...these are the dollars the they received...AFTER any such loophole...it explains that towards the end of the article...young lady...the top 50% of earners pay 97% of the taxes, and the botton 50% pay 2.9%...look it up !!...there is so much fiction posted on these boards, but they are good for a chuckle...from time to time...lol

Another cut/paste without attribution. Here's the link it was stolen from:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659695380368965.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

On, and just in case:

Attribution: "The practice of crediting the source of information."

Ooops.

Young lady?

Must you be condescending?

once again...if you're dumb enough to think I wrote that...then that's your problem pal...I started it with my own sentence...which I thought would keep you from stalking me...but...I guess I was wrong...the point is...go ahead and refute these numbers...I'm sure you'll find a way...

my exact line is..." here's really whats going on "...thats's my way of pasting the whole article...as oppose to just the link...

Wow. It looks like I'm paying more than my fair share of taxes. Many of them on a wasteful war.

You know, pal, many of the people Obama is looking to give a tax cut struggle to make ends meet. If you have no empathy for them, that's your prerogative. The highly paid will not suffer by paying more in taxes.

no country has ever taxed itself into prosperity...the revenues received is NOT the problem...it's the SPENDING !...my father always said about Democrats..." When you get your paycheck...do you give your neighbor 50 bucks...do you give the guy across the alley 30 bucks...do you give the guy down the street 40 bucks...NO !...but you'll vote for someone that will do it for ya' !! "...

Giocamo,

If my neighbors needed the money, I would give it to them.

young lady...you missed the point...oh well...

No. I did not. I was taking YOU to my point.

Young lady?! Puh-leaze don't act so condescending to me.

I'm sorry you take it the wrong way...I use that term quite often...but...from this moment forward...never aging directed at you...I apologize...and...bye bye..

Thank you for saying you're sorry.

If you go to work or school, cut and paste, using material generated by another without crediting it's author is called theft or plagiarism.

Please, if you are going to use the work of others note it.

George Bush has spent like a madman, increased the number of the federal government employees, enlarged the bureaucracy, increased the deficit and our debt to foreign governments. Not content to just do that they are now going to hand over another 700bil minimum to corporations.

It's not the democrats spending your money. It's you beloved republicans.

So, what are you going to beleive? An old saw from you daddy about Democrats or the truth about the current Republican administration?

I think I know the answer to that...go ahead...buy the hype, vote against you own self interest.

The queen of cut and paste herself!

Obama is doing nothing for those struggling to make ends meet! He even said so in the debate last night! "Those earning less than $250,000 will see no increase", he didn't say he was decreasing a damn thing for those trying to make ends meet! The sh!t is staying the same! Watch our energy bills skyrocket like gas prices when he pursues clean coal if he's elected!

You make alot of bull**** charges with no facts to back them up.

Yeah right...that was the same line NJ got fed by Corzine & we all know he raised EVERYTHING!!!!

We'll get more of the same lies on the natl. level...I hope Americans don't fall for it or they really will be paying for it once DEMS get control.

It will make BUSH look like cookies & milk.