Paying Their Fair Share

One thing we're almost guaranteed to hear between now and the election in November, and even afterward, is that in this country the rich need to pay their fair share of taxes. The implication, of course, is that the rich, whoever they are, are not now shouldering a just proportion of the nation's tax burden and can afford to pay more.

We often hear the richest 1% disparaged for shirking their duty to pay more of their income in order for the tax burden to be fairly distributed.

A UCLA economics professor takes on these claims and gives us some surprising (perhaps) statistics on what the rich actually do pay in federal taxes. The upshot is that the rich are already contributing their fair share by any reasonable definition of the word "fair."

This video is about five minutes long and paints an easy to understand and helpful portrait of how federal taxes are distributed across various income groups: