Last week, we blogged Tom Daley (Bowers, Narasky & Daley, Moraga, CA), Progressive? Yes. But Steeply Progressive?, 109 Tax Notes 395 (Oct. 17, 2005).  Jim Saxton (Chair of the Joint Economic Committee) has published a response, JEC Chair Saxton Responds to Tom Daley, 109 Tax Notes 685 (Oct. 31, 2005), also available on the Tax Analysts web site as Doc 2005-21789, 2005 TNT 210-37.  Here is the opening:

Tom Daley … agrees with me that the income tax is progressive but quibbles about my use of the adjective "steeply" to describe that progressivity in my Joint Economic Committee press release. He then relies on a rather extreme hypothetical example using made-up numbers to try to prove his point, while ignoring the complete IRS file of actual data available on the JEC Web site through a link with this same press release, and also available on the IRS Web site.

The IRS data show that the proportion of individual income taxes paid by the top 1 percent is slightly more than twice their share of adjusted gross income (AGI). Those data also show that the share of those income taxes paid by the bottom half of tax filers is about one-quarter their share of AGI. That degree of progression seems pretty steep to me. I would venture to say that most Americans would agree. Extreme hypothetical examples are not necessary to make that point or debate it when the actual data suffice.