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Federal Tax: Who Pays, and Where Does It Go?

10 April 2007

It’s tax time, and what better place to go for an explanation of tax policies and related issues than the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. See, for example, the just-released Where do Our Tax Dollars Go? Despite my dismay with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I feel a modicum of wellbeing knowing that more than twice as much of my federal taxes go to support Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and Safety Net Programs than war. Federal Tax Burdens in Historical Perspective was also just released.

. . .it may come as a surprise that federal tax burdens for most income groups—and, in particular, for middle-income households — are at their lowest levels in decades, and were low by historical standards even before the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

However, another study discussed in “Federal Tax Burdens. . .” had a finding which may not be so surprising: “. . .the very highest-income households have seen the sharpest drops in the percentage of income that they pay in federal taxes.”

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