The following is available from the Internal Revenue Service Data Book 2007, Publication 55B, Washington, DC, issued March 2008.
In 2007 the US government collected 2.4 TRILLION dollars in taxes.
That's $2,396,290,997,000 - look here and select table #1. Look at the net collections after $295 billion in refunds.
Of the $2.4 trillion:
a) $368.5 billion came from income tax paid by corporations - 15.4%
b) $1.17 trillion came from income tax paid by individuals - 46.6%
c) $838 billion came from employment taxes (payroll tax such as FICA) - 35%
d) $26 billion came from estate (death) and gift taxes - 1.1%
e) $46 billion came from excise (gasoline, etc.) taxes - 2.0%
So let's figure that half of the $700 billion Wall Street Bail out is going to be funded by us, individual tax payers.
Last year 138.9 million individuals filed income tax (Table #2). Of course many of these were joint returns for married couples. This translates to the average income tax paid per return was $17,252.66. Of course that's doesn't mean anything; I paid nothing close to that and you the reader probably didn't either. If you did, well God bless you!
Using the IRS Table 1.1 for 2007 returns we can see just what our income tax burden was based on Adjusted Gross Income groupings. For there then it is possible to extrapolate what percentage of the $700 billion bail out you will pay based on what range your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) falls into.
Directions: under the section "All Returns: Selected Income and Tax Items" select Tax Years: and pick 2006 - this is the latest year available and will lead you to the spreadsheet named 06in11si. You can do the math too because, quite frankly, I don't trust myself after the per capita bomb in my previous post. I almost never make mistakes like that.
We'll use the 46.6% of all income tax collected from individual tax returns as our bench mark. That percentage (46.6%) of $700 billion is $326.2 billion.
The total 2006 individual income tax after credits was $1.023 trillion ($1,023,916,399,000 - this is a bit different than what the IRS says it collected in 2007 but it probably involves other things such as interest, fines, etc.).
Based on those numbers, the following spreadsheet is posted using Zoho which allows you to import and embed Excel type spreadsheets in blogs. What is really exciting is that this is an interactive spreadsheet - it allows you to input changes.
What I have done is produce a spreadsheet that allows you to see approximately what the GREAT WALL STREET BAILOUT OF 2008 will cost you depending on how what your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) is.
This is how it works. I have taken the 2006 IRS figures for AGI for the number of returns, amount of income taxes paid and what each AGI grouping will pay depending on their percentage of total income taxes paid. Then I divided that by the number of returns for each AGI grouping to arrive at how much each individual in that grouping will pay (Average Cost of Bail Out Per Individual Return).
If the cost of the Wall Street Bail Out changes to, say, $1 Trillion, and the percentage to 50% , just enter those values into the top ranges, cells B2 and B3. The Average Cost Per Individual Return will also change (rows 56 to 74), indicating how much it will cost you based on your AGI. Remember to input percentage changes as a decimal equivalent, i.e .48 (point 48) instead of just 48, or else you will get the wrong percentages.
This is probably a little too simplistic but it should serve as an indicator as to just how far the politicians are going to ram this bail out up your ass.
If anyone has a better idea on how this should work, by all means try it out yourself and let me know.
Note: One problem with this is that I cannot figure out how people reporting zero AGI still paid $57.7 million in income tax - unless these are penalties, fines or other forms of income that fall into a different category. Perhaps these are people financed by George Soros who have to figure out a way to account for all the money they have donated to Obama.
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