It seems we hear more about “inequity” in recent years, like income inequality. Income inequality refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a population. That shouldn’t be a surprise since our efforts are asymmetric. We don’t hear much about the asymmetry in the effort. That is, some try harder and work harder than others, and take bigger risks, which leads to the asymmetry in income.

Regardless of the cause, the progressive U.S. tax system aims to balance it out to spread the wealth.

In “A closer look at who does (and doesn’t) pay U.S. income tax” Pew Research finds that:

…taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns).

By contrast, taxpayers with incomes below $30,000 filed nearly 44% of all returns but paid just 1.4% of all federal income tax – in fact, two-thirds of the nearly 66 million returns filed by people in that lowest income tier owed no tax at all.

Read the full story at: “A closer look at who does (and doesn’t) pay U.S. income tax“