ARE THE RICH PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE?

A few years back (in 2000) Republicans were howling about how much California's wealthy were paying to the state in taxes compared to what the wealthy in other states paid. And, guess what? They were right. California's wealthiest 1% were paying 7.2% of their income to the state tax man compared to their wealthy "Monopoly Man" brethren in other states, who paid only 5.2%.

California's Monopoly Man was going broke. The horror of it all.


As you can imagine, this helped keep the Republican anti-tax jihad going full force politically. But the claims were a shell game.

You see, there are several states that don't have state income taxes. Alaska, for example, doesn't collect income taxes because they've got their hand out for oil (welfare) checks, which the state makes sure the oil companies pay for. Because of this corporate tax bonanza, every year Alaska can hand out $2,000 government checks to Alaska's wilderness loving rugged individualists who, ironically enough, hate "big gubmint." The Palin family cashes out about $12,000 of these checks annually. (Insert wink here ; -) ).

Other states simply choose to reduce, or do without, services in the areas of health and education. This reduces tax demands significantly, but it also helps keep states (especially those in the south) ranked at the bottom when it comes to education and health scores.

Other states simply ignore infrastructure projects. Bridges in Minnesota don't fall down by themselves you know. That takes real negligence.


Where am I going with all of this? Simple. While Republicans regularly complain about paying taxes in California, the state's richest pay less in state taxes (as a percentage of income) than does California's middle class and working poor.

In this LA Times article, "Are the rich paying their fair share?" (hat tip to Richard C.) it turns out that California's richest are not paying their fair share. This helps explain our budget deficits, and why our infrastructure and education levels are in such dire straits in many areas around the state.

If we take a look at figures from 2000 and 2009 it turns out that California's wealthiest paid less as a percentage of their income in 2009 (7.1%) than what they did in 2000 (7.2%). More importantly, they don't come close to paying what the bottom 40% pay in taxes (11.7% and 10.5%) to the state of California.

GROUP . . . . 2000 NATION . . CA. 2000 / 2009

Bottom 20% . . . . 11.4 . . . . 11.3 / 11.7
Next 20%   . . . . . 10.3 . . . . 10.2 / 10.5
Middle 20%   . . . . 9.6 . . . . 9.2 / 9.5
Fourth 20%    . . . . 8.8 . . . .  8.7 / 8.7
Next 15%    . . . . . 7.7 . . . . . 8.1 / 8.0
Next 4%      . . . . . 6.5 . . . . . 7.6 / 8.0
Top 1%     . . . . . . 5.2 . . . . . 7.2 / 7.1

And things are slated to get worse. According to the Franchise Tax Board (California's IRS), the 2008 tax deal cut in the state legislature will cost California more than $3 billion over the next eight years.

Guess who's going to benefit from this?

- Mark