If we taxed the "Super Rich" at 100% of their income, would that close our budget deficit? An interesting look at those numbers here...

There has been a lot of talk about putting an additional tax on millionaires to increase revenues to the Federal Government.  Let me be more radical. Let's take ALL their taxable income for one year!

Below are data from the IRS (year 2009). Look at the incomes for "$1,000 under $1,500" on down to "$10,000,000 or more". The data are in "thousands", so add 3 zeroes to the end of the numbers to get millions.  The third column shows "Income Tax Paid" and the fourth column shows "After Tax Income (What is left)" for each of the benchmark levels of income. 

In addition to to what they have already paid in the third column, let's go ahead and take the amount in the fourth column too (the amount the rich have left over after paying taxes).

That total is $549,411,208,000 (billions).


Look at the data below, specifically the "Deficit (-) or Surplus (+)" line of numbers. If, in 2009, we took what rich taxpayers already pay in taxes PLUS what they have left over (in others words tax them at 100%), it would still not come close to closing the budget deficit for the fiscal year 2010 (or 2011 or 2012). Add the $549 billion number to the negative number--it becomes LESS negative.

The budget deficit would be very small in 2013, and indeed, it be gone by 2014... BUT that assumes there would be ANY millionaires around anymore to tax.

Far be it from me to defend the rich. Not one and never will be.  My goal here is to show the scale and scope of our budget issues at the Federal level. If taking all money from the rich does not come close to solving the problem, then what IS the problem? (Art--I DO already know the answer :) )

Do the Super Rich need to be subjected to higher taxes? That is a political question. It might make people feel better, but it is not the solution to our long term budget problems.  Can't we have a better class of politicians (Dem/Reps) working on our behalf? Rhetorical question, needs no answer....