History shows that Democrats raise taxes

Ron Levesque, Las Vegas

Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008 | 2:02 a.m.

Regarding Richard J. Mundy’s Feb. 5 letter to the editor, headlined “Tax cuts are just windfalls for wealthy”:

Mr. Mundy claims we shouldn’t be fooled or frightened into believing that Democrats will raise taxes if elected to office.

If I’m not mistaken, the last Democratic president who didn’t raise taxes was John F. Kennedy. He actually instituted across-the-board tax cuts similar to the ones that President Bush did, and those tax cuts (as has every broad-based tax cut since) actually produced an increase in revenue to the federal government.

Democratic members of Congress are incessant in their rhetoric about solving the so-called Bush deficit by rescinding the Bush tax cuts and raising taxes on the “wealthy/rich.” Considering past performance and current rhetoric, I think anyone who pays federal income taxes should be worried that the Democrats, if elected, will raise our taxes.

Mr. Mundy also says the Bush tax cuts disproportionately favored the wealthiest among us, and that the “rich” don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

The latest statistics from the Internal Revenue Service (from tax year 2005) may help people understand why Mr. Mundy’s last two assertions may sound good to some, but won’t stand up to the application of critical thinking and a little common sense.

The top 10 percent of taxpayers (those with an adjusted gross income of $103,912) earned 46.44 percent of the total income and paid 70.30 percent of all federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with an adjusted gross income of $30,881 or less) earned 12.83 percent of all income and paid only 3.07 percent of all federal income taxes.

The idea that across-the-board tax cuts disproportionately benefit the “wealthy” would make sense only if the “wealthy” weren’t such a small percentage of the taxpaying population and didn’t pay such a large percentage of the tax burden.