A good friend of mine, who has friends who are active in the Tea Party movement, stopped to chat today and asked me if I could find a source of information that would refute her friend’s claim that no part of the personal income tax that we pay goes towards anything other than paying the interest on the national debt.<\/p>\n
I love a challenge and set to work. I was astonished to find the number of sites from the right wing populists and Tea Party members who rant incoherently about unfair taxes and tout something called a Fair Tax (a regressive consumption tax) and call for the abolishment of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave Congress the power to levy an income tax. Color me ignorant. But not any longer. After some searching, I found the website of the National Priorities Project<\/a>. They offer a pie chart calculator that informs you what portion of the income tax that you pay goes to what expenditure. To make it easy to calculate a percentage, I used the figure of $100 so that the portions paid are easily convertible to percentages.<\/p>\n As an example: 29% goes to the Military and 8% goes to Military debt. Only 3% goes to Education. Is that skewed or what?<\/p>\n