Tax Day: Half of Americans Get a Pass

Nearly half of your fellow citizens shrugged their shoulders at today's filing deadline for federal income taxes. Unlike the rest of us saps, these Americans pay no income taxes to Washington. No wonder so few people are upset over President Obama's calls to raise taxes to pay for a bloated government.

According to the Tax Policy Center, 47 percent of Americans contributed nothing to funding the federal government through income taxes for 2009. This does not mean they avoided taxes altogether. Most had their paychecks docked for Social Security and Medicare.

Incredibly, 14 percent of Americans paid no federal taxes or payroll taxes. This is possible because the threshold for filing keeps being raised to accommodate the poverty level. Although no data exists, it is safe to assume many of these same people receive benefits for food, rent and other services from the government.

More than half of the nation's federal tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners, the center estimates. Those evil millionaires who make up the top five percent contributed 44 percent of all the revenue the federal government collected through income taxes from individuals and corporations in 2009.

Even that comparison may be unfair to the wealthy. Considering only individual tax returns, the top five percent of taxpayers paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. These individuals earned 34.7 percent of the nation's adjusted income yet shelled out the lion's share of federal income taxes. If you have listened to the media and the president, you would swear the rich were carried by the middle class.

Meanwhile, 52 million households not only paid no taxes but actually got back every penny withheld from their paychecks, reports The Tax Foundation. These figures are for tax returns filed in 2008, the latest year for which the data is available.

How did that happen? This is the result of a tax code that contains credits, deductions and exemptions valued at about $1.1 trillion, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate, an dependent watchdog organization. One of the most lucrative refund producers is the Earned Income Tax Credit for all sorts of government boondoggles. It includes credits for purchases of weatherproofing, for example.

This is why it is so disingenuous for the president to call on the most successful individuals to fork over an even larger share of the tax burden while many people pay not a single dime. Even if the rates on the top five percent were doubled, it wouldn't matter. There still would not be enough money to reduce the federal deficit to zero.

What America needs is significant tax reform to restore fairness. Every citizen should be required to pay for his or her government, even if the amount is only a few dollars. When people don't have to worry about who's funding government, they become dependent drones who happily vote for anyone who promises more federal handouts.

Paying taxes should be viewed as one of the costs of citizenship. When a country allows one group to be taxed while others escape responsibility, it is a nation that invites class warfare that will one day lead to financial ruin and anarchy.