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treasury
Honest Math Shows That the Wealthy Aren’t Paying Their Fair Share
But tax data, as the study Treasury officials released last summer shows, tell a far different story.
If Congress does not at some point soon raise what our ultra-rich pay in taxes as a percentage of their wealth, our grandchildren could well be living in a nation where our richest 0.01% hold half our nation’s wealth, quintuple their current share.
This Treasury study—led by an academic team that included the widely respected economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman—spotlighted a wide variety of stats on the incomes America’s 183.7 million taxpayer units reported and the taxes they paid in 2019.
The report devoted special attention to how much in taxes the nation’s most affluent that year paid, breaking these taxpayers down into wealth categories ranging from our richest 10% to our richest 0.001%. To drill down even deeper, the report tapped annual Forbes 400 data to calculate comparable stats for those households that sit at our nation’s even higher wealth summit.
And what did the Treasury report show? At that summit, the nation’s richest 0.0002%—a group that roughly corresponds in size to the Forbes 400—paid in 2019 federal and state taxes the equivalent of less than 1% of their wealth. The richest of America’s rich, the top 0.00005% of taxpayers, paid in federal and state taxes an amount that equaled just 0.75%.
All these rich did, to be sure, pay some foreign taxes as well. But the richest of America’s rich, even after taking these foreign taxes into account, still paid in taxes less than 1% of their wealth, as this charting of the Treasury Department stats shows.
The Tax Foundation’s just-published response to the Treasury data doesn’t dispute the accuracy of any of these figures. The Tax Foundation claims instead that the Treasury report confirms that America’s rich “pay more than one-third of their annual income in federal taxes and more than 45% when state and local taxes are included.”
Indeed, the Tax Foundation adds, the total tax burden on the nation’s super wealthy can, with foreign taxes paid taken into account, run “upwards of 60% of their annual income.”
The key word here: income. The Treasury study, the Tax Foundation charges, “classifies taxpayers according to an estimate of their wealth rather than their income, with the intention of showing that the rich pay very little in taxes.” The rich, the foundation concludes, “are not undertaxed relative to their annual income.”
This Tax Foundation’s claim begs some obvious questions: What yardstick should we use to consider whether our wealthiest are paying an appropriate amount of tax? If our wealthiest, after paying their taxes, are still watching their personal wealth grow at a higher growth rate than the nation’s total wealth, are these wealthy paying their “fair tax share”?
The annual Forbes 400 may be the best place to start our answer to that question. Between 2014 and 2024, the wealth of the Forbes 400 increased from $2.29 trillion to $5.4 trillion. That translates to an annual growth rate of 8.96%, net of taxes and living expenses. Over the same period, America’s total household wealth grew 6.8% annually, increasing from $79.94 trillion to $154.39 trillion.
At those 2014-2024 rates of growth, the share of the nation’s wealth the Forbes 400 holds would double every 35 years. Over the past 42 years, the Forbes 400 share of the nation’s wealth has actually grown at an even faster rate, nearly quadrupling over that four-decade-plus span.
The wealth of our wealthiest has no natural limit. If Congress does not at some point soon raise what our ultra-rich pay in taxes as a percentage of their wealth, our grandchildren could well be living in a nation where our richest 0.01% hold half our nation’s wealth, quintuple their current share.
What level of taxation would be required to stop America’s wealth from concentrating so furiously? To close the gap between the growth rate for the wealth of the richest Americans and our nation’s overall growth in total wealth, current combined federal and state taxes on those at the top would have to rise substantially, at least tripling.
None of these figures should come as a surprise. We’ve known for decades now about the under-taxation of America’s billionaires, a reality that rests on what may be the single most glaring flaw in America’s tax system: “adjusted gross income.” The Internal Revenue Code uses this “AGI” as the starting point for calculating federal income tax due. But “adjusted gross income”—for America’s richest taxpayers—has become and continues to be an entirely meaningless figure.
Consider 2019, the year the Treasury study this past August most closely highlighted. The S&P 500 stock index that year rose 30% between the opening of trading in January and the last trading day in December. For Americans at our nation’s economic summit, that made for a wonderful year. These wealthy derive nearly all their income from their investments.
As we move up the economic scale, the wealth growth of the ultra-rich follows a clear pattern: The economic income—that is, the rate of wealth growth—of the topmost group increases as the size of the group shrinks.
Between 2014 and 2024, for example, the wealth of the 92 richest Americans increased from $1.4 trillion to $3.4 trillion, a jump that translates to an annual growth rate just over 9%. Over that same period, the wealth of remaining 308 in the Forbes 400 grew at a rate of 8.82%. By contrast, in 2019, the average adjusted gross incomes of the top 92 taxpayers and the next 275 taxpayers stood at 1.66% and 3.11% of their average wealth.
In other words, the higher up we go on the wealth ladder, the higher the rate of wealth growth, as we would expect. But adjusted gross income, expressed as a percentage of wealth, decreases. For America’s wealthiest, adjusted gross income bears no relationship to actual economic income. Any estimate of income that places, as the AGI does, the income of the 92 richest Americans at only 1.66% of their wealth rates as essentially useless.
To sharpen this picture even more, consider the increase in tax on America’s wealthiest 367 that would be needed to freeze the increase in their share of our nation’s wealth. Avoiding a further increase in the concentration of the nation’s wealth would require an overall increase in the rate of taxes our top 367 pay to more than 150% of their adjusted gross income. If we limited their overall tax rate to a mere 100% of their adjusted gross income, their share of the country’s wealth would continue to increase.
Where does that leave us? For taxing the rich, we currently rely on an income tax based on adjusted gross income as our primary vehicle. That isn’t working. If we’re going to achieve fair share taxation of the rich, we need to scrap AGI and develop a measure of income that accurately reflects their true economic income. Otherwise, we need to tax wealth directly.
$10 Trillion in Added US Debt Since 2001 Shows 'Bush and Trump Tax Cuts Broke Our Modern Tax Structure'
While much of the reporting on the Treasury figures painted a picture of various and overlapping dynamics to explain the surge in the deficit—including higher payments on debt due to interest rates, tax filing waivers related to extreme weather events, the impact of a student loan forgiveness program that was later rescinded, or a dip in capital gains receipts—progressive tax experts say none of those complexities should act to shield what's at the heart of a budget that brings in less than it spends: tax giveaways to the rich.
Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, has argued repeatedly that growing deficits in recent years have a clear and singular chief cause: Republican tax cuts that benefit mostly the wealthy and profitable corporations.
In response to the Treasury figures released Friday, Kogan said that "roughly 75%" of the surge in the deficit and the debt ratio, the amount of federal debt relative to the overall size of the economy, was due to revenue decreases resulting from GOP-approved tax cuts over recent decades. "Of the remaining 25%," he said, "more than half" was higher interest payments on the debt related to Federal Reserve policy.
"We have a revenue problem, due to tax cuts," said Kogan, pointing to the major tax laws enacted under the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. "The Bush and Trump tax cuts broke our modern tax structure. Revenue is significantly lower and no longer grows much with the economy." And he offered this visualization about a growing debt ratio:
"The point I want to make again and again and again is that, relative to the last time CBO was projecting stable debt/GDP, spending is down, not up," Kogan said in a tweet Friday night. "It's lower revenue that's 100% responsible for the change in debt projections. If you take away nothing else, leave with this point."
In his tweet, Kogan offered the following chart to show recent and projected levels of both federal revenue and spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP):
In a detailed analysis produced in March, Kogan explained that, "If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded."
On Friday, the office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) cited those same numbers in a press release responding to the Treasury's new report.
"Tax giveaways for the wealthy are continuing to starve the federal government of needed revenue: those passed by former Presidents Trump and Bush have added $10 trillion to the debt and account for 57 percent of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001," read the statement. "If not for those tax cuts, U.S. debt would be declining as a share of the economy."
Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, said the dip in federal revenue and growth in the overall deficit both have the same primary cause: GOP fealty to the wealthy individuals and powerful corporations that bankroll their campaigns.
"In their blind loyalty to their mega-donors, Republicans' fixation on giant tax cuts for billionaires has created a revenue problem that is driving up our national debt," Whitehouse said Friday night. "Even as federal spending fell over the last year relative to the size of the economy, the deficit increased because Republicans have rigged the tax code so that big corporations and the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share."
Offering a solution, Whitehouse said, "Fixing our corrupted tax code and cracking down on wealthy tax cheats would help bring down the deficit. It would also ensure teachers and firefighters don't pay higher tax rates than billionaires, level the playing field for small businesses, and promote a stronger economy for all."
None of the latest figures—those showing that tax cuts have injured revenues and therefore spiked deficits and increased debt—should be a surprise.
In 2018, shortly after the Trump tax cuts were signed into law, a Congressional Budget Office (CBo) report predicted precisely this result: that revenues would plummet; annual deficits would grow; and not even the promise of economic growth made by Republicans to justify the giveaway would be enough to make up the difference in the budget.
"The CBO's latest report exposes the scam behind the rosy rhetoric from Republicans that their tax bill would pay for itself," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and now Senate Majority Leader, said at the time.
"Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them."
In its 2018 report, the CBO predicted the deficit would rise to $804 billion by the end of that fiscal year. Now, for all the empty promises and howling from the GOP and their allied deficit hawks, the economic prescription they forced through Congress has resulted in an annual deficit of more than double that, all while demanding the nation's poorest and most vulnerable pay the price by demanding key social programs—including food aid, education budgets, unemployment benefits, and housing assistance—be slashed.
Meanwhile, the GOP majority in the U.S. House—with or without a Speaker currently holding the gavel—still has plans to extend the Trump tax cuts if given half a chance. In May, a CBO analysis of that pending legislation found that such an extension would add an additional $3.5 trillion to the national debt.
"Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them," Sen. Whitehouse said at the time. "It is one of life's great enigmas that Republicans can keep a straight face while they simultaneously cite the deficit to extort massive spending cuts to critical programs and support a bill that would blow up deficits to extend trillions in tax cuts for the people who need them the least."
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