Muddling through tax revenue numbers
After watching the debate, everyone was yelling about the numbers. The numbers! Ahh! I hate math. But I want to know how much tax revenue would be lost by cutting taxes 20% across the board, and under Mitt’s “revenue neutral” plan, who would pick up the tab by losing out on deductions etc. So I made a graph:
But I don’t know the numbers on the deductions — who gets the most deductions, by total tax revenue? Also, we don’t know which of those Mitt intends to get rid of.
I’ve probably mucked this all up — these numbers just don’t look big enough! Don’t we make more than 900B in income tax revenue annually? — but here’s the data.
Sources are marked, I did some back of the napkin interpolating and mixed the last few years, but I just want a ballpark picture. What I’d really like to see is the the extra revenue from cutting deductions added on top of the lower (red) line to show who will end up paying for the lost revenue. In a new chart!!!
October 5th, 2012 at 10:25 am
The graph here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States#Levels_and_types_of_taxation
says $900 billion from individual income taxes. Payroll taxes are nearly as much. Trailing, you have corporate income, and “Other”, and even smaller others.
Also recall that revenue is severely depressed due to high unemployment.