Quote:
Originally Posted by Murphy3
Chum, I don't believe it's 47% either..but it's much higher than I ever could have imagined in my younger years.
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This information is off the 2009 numbers. But Romney got his numbers from the same source:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...households-pa/
His statistics come from a document produced by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a respected bipartisan committee of Congress. The JCT found that for tax year 2009, roughly 22 percent of "tax units" (not exactly "households," but we’ll give him a pass on the terminology) ended up without any tax liability. Another 30 percent got money back from the government, through mechanisms such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, a longstanding policy that encourages low-income Americans to work by refunding money through the tax code. By contrast, JCT found just 49 percent of Americans owed anything to the government.
Because high earners have so much income liability, the breaks they get still don’t lower their taxes to zero. By contrast, popular lower- and middle-income breaks such as child credits and mortgage interest deductions do get a big share of the population off the hook.
PS. Soldiers deployed to combat zones are part of the 47% who don't pay federal income tax.