off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Reality Check on Who Pays Taxes
| By
CBPP
With the issue of who pays federal income taxes back in the news, here’s a post we did on this subject in April. It’s based on this CBPP analysis, which relies in large part on data from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center:
Have you heard that close to half of U.S. households currently don’t owe federal income tax? Does that mean, as some policymakers and pundits claim, that low- and moderate-income families don’t pay taxes, or don’t pay enough of them? Not at all, as our updated analysis of this widely misunderstood issue explains.
Here are some of its key points:
Image

- The oft-cited figure that 51 percent of households didn’t pay federal income tax in 2009 is a temporary spike caused by the recession. In 2007, before the economy turned down, 40 percent of households did not owe federal income tax.
- These figures cover only the federal income tax and ignore the substantial amounts of other federal taxes — especially the payroll tax — that many of these households pay (see graphs at right). Some 82 percent of working households pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes. In fact, low- and moderate-income people pay a much larger share of their incomes in federal payroll taxes than high-income people do.
- Most of the people who pay neither federal income tax nor payroll taxes are low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students, most of whom subsequently become taxpayers.
- Low-income households also pay substantial state and local taxes. Most state and local taxes are regressive, meaning that low-income families pay a larger share of their incomes in these taxes than wealthier households do (see graph below).
- When all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth of households pays about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average. The second-poorest fifth pays about 21 percent.
Image

Stay up to date
Receive the latest news and reports from the Center