Liberals like President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and The Squad expend plenty of hot air griping that “the wealthy” and corporations don’t pay their “fair share” in taxes.
Conservative columnist Terence Jeffrey begs to differ.
Jeffrey noted in a column posted Wednesday that the federal government as of July 2021 collected a record amount of tax revenue for the first 10 months of a fiscal year (October through July).
In that time span, Washington hauled in $3.32 trillion.
The previous record – $3.06 trillion, in current dollars – was posted in 2017, according to Jeffrey.
Mind you, the new high mark was set before Biden and the Democrats could repeal former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, and before Biden and the Democrats could jack up the corporate tax rate by 33 percent, from 21 percent to a proposed 28 percent.
Jeffrey provided a breakdown of the government’s revenue:
- $1.71 trillion in individual income taxes;
- $1.08 trillion social insurance and retirement taxes;
- $282.1 billion in corporation income taxes;
- $57.2 billion in excise taxes;
- $23 billion in “death” taxes;
- $64.9 billion in tariffs;
- And $101.5 billion in “miscellaneous receipts.”
To put that number Jeffrey cites in context, at the current rate, the federal government will pull down right at $4 trillion in taxes this year.
That would have been enough to fund the federal government without incurring any new debt as recently as 2017, when federal outlays totaled $3.98 trillion.
Moreover, according to the Tax Foundation, the top half of income earners pay 97 percent of federal income taxes, and that the highest earners – the 1-percenters – pay 40 percent of the overall total.
Clearly, even amid the pandemic, Trump’s tax cuts are a significant engine of revenue generation.
But the reason few people know that, aside from the obvious bias that precludes the mainstream media from reporting on it, is that Washington spends like NFL players in a strip club.
Federal spending during 2021 so far has reached $5.86 trillion, Jeffrey noted.
That’s the second-highest rate ever. The most ever: just last year.
Jeffrey did put the spending number into context.
He pointed out that the $5.86 trillion spent so far is 48 percent above the same period in 2019 before the pandemic.
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