{"id":70216,"date":"2017-04-18T14:25:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T19:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=70216"},"modified":"2017-04-18T14:26:49","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T19:26:49","slug":"where-did-your-2016-tax-dollars-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/04\/18\/where-did-your-2016-tax-dollars-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Where did your 2016 tax dollars go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 80% of the US federal government’s budget comes from payroll and income taxes. The National Priorities Project<\/a>\u00a0is dedicated to helping Americans\u00a0understand how that money is\u00a0spent. Here\u2019s the data for 2016:<\/p>\n

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The highest individual income “top” tax rate in history was 94%<\/a>; that was the rate at which\u00a0any income\u00a0above\u00a0200,000 was taxed in 1945, equivalent to almost 2.8 million today. Today it’s 39.6%. The Nobel laureate Peter Diamond and economist Emmanuel Saez\u00a0argue<\/a>\u00a0that the top tax rate should optimally be 73%.<\/p>\n

Last year corporate taxes made up only about 11% of the federal government\u2019s revenue; this is down from a historic high of almost 40% in 1943. This is partly because of a low tax rate of 35% and partly because of legal loopholes. According to the Project’s 7 Tax Facts for 2017<\/a>, 100 of the 258 most profitable Fortune 500 companies paid zero in taxes for at least one of the last eight years. General Electric, Priceline, and PG&E haven’t paid a penny in taxes for almost a decade.<\/p>\n

Visit the National Priorities Project here and find out\u00a0how\u00a0each state benefits from federal tax dollars<\/a> or fiddle around with how you would\u00a0organize American priorities<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 80% of the US federal government’s budget comes from payroll and income taxes. The National Priorities Project\u00a0is dedicated to helping Americans\u00a0understand how that money is\u00a0spent. Here\u2019s the data for 2016: The highest individual income “top” tax rate in history was 94%; that was the rate at which\u00a0any income\u00a0above\u00a0200,000 was taxed in 1945, equivalent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":70217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/04\/8.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70218,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70216\/revisions\/70218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}