Socialists and other left-leaning people like to say that the rich are getting a free ride - but the data clearly shows that this is not true.

After all the hype and hoopla about how unfair the tax system is: it turns out that 60% of the income tax revenue received by the I.R.S. comes from the citizens who earn the top 5% of the income.

More telling is the percentage of total income tax revenue paid by fully half of all americans: 3%! It turns out that 50% of all americans earn less than $31,000 per year. All of them together, fully half the tax payers in the country, contribute a total of only 3% of all the income tax revenue collected by the I.R.S.

The balance, under 40% of all income tax revenue collected by the I.R.S., is paid by people who earn between $31,000 and about $400,000 per year.

It seems that socialists and other left-leaning people are basically trying to equate the rewards of hard work with some kind of fraud. The data clearly shows that this is not true:

• Almost all people with a net worth of over $1 million started out in the low to middle-income brackets.
• On average they work longer hours for more years than other people.
• They have to spend carefully and save constantly for decades before their net worth crosses the million dollar mark.
• And, as we can see clearly from the tax data: they already pay their fair share of the income tax collected by the government.

For detailed figures going back seven years, please refer to this page:

http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

Who pays income tax in the U.S.? People who work hard do. Most likely the data for Canada is not much different.