What are the chances that all millionaires would voluntary donate?
You're right about the income tax - what about payroll taxes and sales taxes?
Apparently the top percentile of America's richest people earn more from investments than in actual working income.
" it's important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries"
I found this interesting: "Wall Street and the top of corporate America are doing extremely well as of June 2011. For example, in Q1 of
2011, America's top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries. Somewhere around 40% of the profits in the S&P 500 come from overseas and stay overseas, with about half of these 500 top corporations having their headquarters in tax havens.
If the corporations don't repatriate their profits, they pay no U.S. taxes. The year
2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%, most Americans struggled. In 2010 a dozen major companies, including
GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced. Major U.S. corporations are currently lobbying to have another "tax-repatriation" window like that in 2004 where they can bring back corporate profits at a 5.25% tax rate versus the usual 35% US corporate tax rate. Ordinary working citizens with the lowest incomes are taxed at 10%."
"They suggest that average Americans have been hit much harder than wealthy Americans.
Edward Wolff, the economist we draw upon the most in this document, concludes that there has been an "astounding"
36.1% drop in the wealth (marketable assets) of the median household since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. By contrast, the
wealth of the top 1% of households dropped by far less: just 11.1%. So as of
April 2010, it looks like the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was in 2007. (See
Wolff, 2010 for more details.)"
Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power