From the Wall Street Journal:
“This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%.
The Congressional Budget Office recently examined the distribution of federal taxes on various income groups. The report was ballyhooed by liberals as proof of rising income inequality, but that argument is for another day. What everyone has ignored is what CBO found about the relative taxes paid by different groups. And, lo, the rich pay more, which is probably why the press didn’t report it.”
Indeed” “why the press didn’t report it.” All we have heard from the Left is the inequality, a la Warren Buffet, is the inequality of who pays what for taxes. What they seldom report to the public, and what Warren Buffet absolutely doesn’t mention, is exactly the important info laid out above: double taxation. The money that Buffet receives has already been taxed once at the corporate rate (35% before legal deductions) and as an owner of the corporation (as that’s what shareholders are – owners) he gets taxed a second time on that income – referred to as dividends.