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any article that contains this lie: "The cynical explanation for the persistence of the supply-side dogma is that its simply cover for cutting taxes for the rich." while claiming to be "factual" is worthless.
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What is an undeniable fact is that every tax cut since Kennedy's has resulted in the wealthy paying a larger portion of total income taxes, even after adjusting for inflationary creep into higher income classes. To call them "tax cuts for the rich" is a bald face lie and the article cannot be taken as any more than agenda driven rhetoric.
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You can't just focus on income taxes, and I suspect your statement is a lie, but even if it's not, it's completely misleading, because in a country where the income disparity between the haves and have nots is constantly growing, why should we not judge a tax cut in
absolute terms?
from link
Wouldn't High-Income Families Simply Get Tax Cuts in Proportion to the Share of Taxes They Pay?
One common justification for tax cuts heavily geared toward those at the top of the income spectrum is that high-income individuals pay a disproportionate share of taxes and hence should receive a corresponding share of the tax cuts. When applied to the Bush tax cut, however, this rationale falls short.
First, the Bush tax plan showers tax cuts on high-income individuals far out of proportion to the taxes they pay. The previously noted Treasury Department study shows that the wealthiest one percent of Americans pay 20 percent of all federal taxes. As this Center report explains, however, the top one percent would receive at least 36 percent of the tax cuts under the Bush plan. The share of the tax cuts these individuals would receive thus would be nearly double the share of federal taxes they pay. Yet this group has the least need for additional income, as the after-tax income of this group grew more rapidly than the income of any other group over the past decade. The percentage of federal taxes that very high-income tax filers pay consequently would decline somewhat, while the share paid by other Americans would edge up.
The Treasury analysis also indicates that the top five percent of taxpayers pays 36.5 percent of federal taxes. This group would receive at least 49 percent of the tax-cut benefits under the Bush plan.
During the presidential campaign, the Bush campaign staff used a competing set of figures that purported to show that the share of the tax cut going to high-income individuals would not be any larger than the share of taxes these individuals pay. The figures that the campaign issued to make this point, however, obfuscated rather than illuminated the issue.
Those figures showed the share of federal income taxes that different income groups paid, omitting payroll, estate, and other taxes. This made the share of taxes said to be paid by those at the top of the income spectrum into a larger percentage. The campaign then compared these figures to the percentage of the tax cut that each income group would receive when the proposal to repeal the estate tax was omitted, even though repeal of the estate tax represents nearly one quarter of the total Bush tax cut by 2010, according to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates. This made the share of the tax cut that would to go high-income individuals look smaller than it actually is.
Families pay both income and other federal taxes. For a substantial majority of American families, their payroll tax bills exceed their income taxes. Furthermore, the Bush plan is not limited to the income tax; it contains tax cuts in other areas as well, such as the estate tax. Undertaking an appropriate comparison thus entails examining the relationship between the share of total federal taxes that a particular income group pays and the share of the overall Bush tax cut that group would receive. When this is done, the finding is clear that the share of the tax cuts that the highest-income Americans would receive substantially exceeds the share of the taxes they pay.
Moreover, the argument that the very well-to-do pay a large share of the taxes so they should get a correspondingly large share of the tax cut is itself flawed. Even if the Bush tax cut did give each income group a share of the tax cuts that equaled the share of federal taxes each group pays, that would not necessarily represent sound policy. When income disparities widen between wealthy and other Americans and a disproportionate share of the income gains from economic growth accrues to those high on the economic ladder and enlarges the already-substantial portion of the national income that they receive as has occurred in recent decades the share of federal taxes that these high-income individuals pay necessarily increases as well. If the principle is blindly followed that tax cuts should be divided among different groups in proportion to the taxes each group pays, this means that when income becomes more concentrated at the top of the income scale and income gaps between wealthy individuals and other Americans widen tax cuts should be targeted to a greater degree on those with high incomes. Stated another way, this principle means that the more fabulously wealthy those at the top of the income scale become, the larger the proportion of the tax cuts that should be directed to them. Such a principle does not represent sound policy.
Citizens for Tax Justice
Scroll down and note the "shares of the total tax cuts" figure for the top 1% which from 2001-2010 is 37.6% in the first chart and 33.3% with the AMT extended.
As noted in
this executive summary :
"The tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households those least in need of additional resources at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum."
and what about the deficit?
"Because the tax cuts are so tilted toward the highest-income households and become even more so over time, as some of the upper-income tax cuts phase-in the burden of financing these lopsided tax cuts ultimately is likely to be borne disproportionately by households who gain only modestly from the tax cuts. This will be the case unless offsetting spending cuts or tax increases are enacted that reduce benefits or raise taxes primarily on high-income households. As a result, over the long term most Americans may well be net losers from the tax cuts."
as this guy is saying
NY Times Article on CBO report
"The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 reduced tax rates for people in all income brackets. But they had a disproportionate effect on people at the very highest income levels because they had already been paying a disproportionate share of total federal taxes and in part because stock dividends got a special lower rate.
People in the very top income categories fared better by almost any measure, according to the report. The average after-tax income for people in the top 1 percent of income earners climbed 10.1 percent, while that of those in the middle 20 percent climbed 2.3 percent, and that of those in the bottom fifth only 1.6 percent.
Put another way, people with the top 1 percent of income saw their share of the tax burden drop to 20.1 percent after the tax cuts from 21.9 percent under the old law.
William G. Gale, a longtime tax analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the new Congressional report was consistent with his own calculations on the distribution of benefits from Mr. Bush's tax cuts.
"It's not just that lower-income people are getting smaller benefits,'' Dr. Gale said. "It's also that these tax cuts will eventually have to be paid for with either spending cuts or tax increases, and those are likely to be less progressive than the taxes they are paying now.''"