August 18, 2009
Bloomberg News Quotes Tax Foundation Senior Economist Gerald Prante on Federal Income Tax Data
"Income Share for Richest in U.S. Set Record for 2007, Study Says"
By Ryan J. Donmoyer
Groups such as the Washington-based Tax Foundation, a Republican-leaning research organization, says such analyses exaggerate income inequality because they measure pretax income. ...
The top 0.1 percent of households, a broader measure than the 0.01 percent used by Saez, pays about 20 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent of the population pays less than 3 percent, the foundation says.
"The 2007 numbers show that the top 1 percent's income and tax shares reached all-time highs for the third year in a row," Tax Foundation economist Gerald Prante wrote in an analysis last month. "That is likely to reverse direction when data from recessionary 2008 is published a year from now."
