Fifty - Fifty
Published: April 25th, 2011
By: Tom Morgan

Fifty - Fifty

For this week’s entertainment, some polling results from Gallup. They cleverly released them on the day when our tax filings were due.

The poll results are more than entertaining. They are laughable.

Gallup polled thousands of taxpayers. It found that half of us feel the federal income taxes we pay are too high. Okay. It found that almost half of us feel the taxes we pay Washington are about right. Okay.

That is a nice statistical divide. Gallup drew a few conclusions about it. Various writers did the same. They pontificated about how those who set our tax rates must have them at just about the right level. After all, we the people are about 50-50 on the question. Therefore and to wit …

All these people must know that half of us do not pay federal income taxes. Half of us. We may pay them during the year. But, oh boy, we get refunds. The refunds equal all we pay in taxes. Or the refund checks are larger than what we paid. Because we are a welfare state to many. Bottom line is, there is nothing under the bottom line. Half of us pay no federal income tax. (We are not talking about Social Security taxes. The poll was about federal income taxes.)

I checked to see how much money the people they polled earned. Half of them earned less than $50,000 per year. Those are mostly folks who pay virtually no federal income taxes.

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