The Incomes of the Top .001 Percent of Taxpayers Are Soaring While Their Tax Burdens Are Falling

Hosts Cecil Prescod and Celeste Carey speak with Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who has an opinion piece on Al Jazeera America about a new IRS report which examines incomes and tax burdens of all Americans. Johnston writes, “Its story of stagnation should be familiar to all. For 80% of Americans, average incomes fell between 2003 and 2012…But depressing as that news is, the real story from the report concerns the very top level of income earners. The biggest income gap in America is not between the top 1 percent of earners and the 99 percent below them, but rather within the top 1 percent, where the split between the have-mores and the have-a-lot-mores is a fast-widening chasm.” Johnston writes that for the first time ever, the IRS offers a close look at the top .001 percent of taxpayers, finding that the top 1,361 households are soaring while their tax burdens are falling. Those 1,361 households enjoyed an average income of $161 million and paid just 17.6 cents out of each dollar they earned in federal income taxes.

Read more here: http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/6/the-top-001-percent-are-different-from-you-and-me.html

David Cay Johnston's latest book is "Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality."
http://www.davidcayjohnston.com/