A while back on this blog, I got into some debates with folks who believed the oil industry wasn’t being taxed enough and that “Big Oil’s” profits were too high and that we ought to confiscate more money from their shareholders and employees.
This should add some perspective to the debate as it confirms that big business more than pulls its weight when it comes to taxes.
In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people!
Of course, if we look to IRS records, we see that the top 50% of individual taxpayers (not corporations) pay 97% of personal income tax. Yet we still hear the old trope that the rich aren’t paying their fair share or that “Big Business” isn’t paying it’s fair share.
“You keep using that word [fair]. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
[Link via Instapundit]
It is a shame no one spends half as much time trying to figure out how to SPEND LESS tax money as they seem to spend on trying to rake more tax money. Maryland passed a whole bunch of new taxes with the claim of inadequate funds for the budget and other pet projects and yet there was no talk of cutting back spending. It is sickening.