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    [OC] What US taxes would look like if billionaires paid their fair share
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    [OC] What US taxes would look like if billionaires paid their fair share

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    5. webfugitive on

      Data Sources

      U.S. Federal Tax Revenue (2023): ~$4.9 trillion total — Congressional Budget Office (CBO) & U.S. Treasury

      Current distribution: IRS and CBO data on payroll taxes, income taxes, corporate taxes; ProPublica reporting (2021) showing billionaires’ effective federal income tax rates (often 0–3%).

      “Fair Share” scenario: Assumption based on wealth tax proposals (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) and OECD models — billionaires contribute ~15% of revenue instead of ~3%.

      Tools Used

      Python

      Matplotlib (for visualization)

      Code was written in Python using matplotlib.pyplot to build stacked bar comparisons with annotations for both percentages and dollar values (trillions).

      Caption / Explanation for Post

      Currently, U.S. billionaires contribute only ~3% of federal tax revenue, despite holding a massive share of national wealth.
      If they paid a “fair share” (around 15% of revenue), ordinary workers’ tax burden could drop significantly while raising an extra ~$735 billion annually — enough to fully fund universal childcare, free community college, or major climate initiatives.

    10. guitmusic12 on

      The definitions of “ordinary workers” and “middle/upper middle income” would be helpful… also which category is Cap Gains included in?

      Also this data is ugly as hell

    11. dee_berg on

      Elizabeth Warren proposed a wealth tax, which I guess this would be. It doesn’t raise nearly the revenue you are suggesting.

    12. Pen_Vast on

      “Billionaires” is wealth, taxes are on income. I have no idea what these graphs are showing.

    14. TaxAg11 on

      I dont understand why Corporate taxes would be affected here. They are completely distinct from individual taxes.

    15. roguespectre67 on

      A small enough number of people in the US to count on one hand control as much wealth as the rest of the country, and yet somehow their hypothetical combined “fair share” is still a tiny fraction of what the entire rest of the working public would contribute? Fuck off.

      In a just, sane world, income would be capped at X amount, with 100% taxes on anything over that amount earmarked towards social programs for the people they exploited to get to the point where the state says “OK, you won capitalism. You literally have more money than millions of people would likely spend in their lifetimes. No more money for you.”

    16. Celestial_User on

      Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense.

      Your graph sums up to be 100%, so the 4 categories must be disjoint categories.
      There is no way middle + upper middle income is only 25% of tax revenue.

      https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/

      This here lists the top 50% income pays 97% of all income taxes.
      Even if you count “middle class” as only the top 25%, that’s still 89% of total.

      People with lower income have lower tax rates, an standard deductible accounts for a larger portion of their total income.

    17. whenitsTimeyoullknow on

      What if we didn’t spend a trillion dollars a year on defense AND billionaires were forced to contribute more?