New York Times op-ed, Who Doesn’t Pay Federal Income Taxes (Legally), by Bruce Bartlett:

According to new data from the Tax Policy Center, this year 46.4% of tax filers will have no federal income tax liability. The following table presents the data.

As one can see, almost all of those in the bottom income quintile — those with incomes below $16,812 — will have no federal income tax liability this year. About three-fifths of those in the second income quintile will also have no liability, 30% of those in the middle quintile, and 7.3% of those in the fourth quintile. It is not only the poor who are exempt from federal income taxation; substantial numbers of households in the middle class are also exempted.

Surprisingly, a not insignificant number of those who are clearly well off are also among the “lucky duckies.” There are 78,000 tax filers with incomes of $211,000 to $533,000 who will pay no federal income taxes this year. Even more amazingly, there are 24,000 households with incomes of $533,000 to $2.2 million with zero income tax liability, and 3,000 tax filers with incomes above $2.2 million with the same federal income tax liability as most of those with incomes barely above the poverty level. …

The phenomenon of large numbers of non-federal income tax payers has long been a subject of debate. Those on the left emphasize that other taxes, such as payroll taxes, are paid by those with no income tax liability, a point I discussed last week. Those on the right often complain that it is fundamentally undemocratic for such a large percentage of the population to pay nothing to offset the federal government’s general operations. After all, everyone benefits from national military spending and other federal programs.

Perhaps the right and left can at least agree that it is unseemly for those in the top 1 percent of income distribution, with incomes at least 10 times the median income, to pay no federal income taxes. It’s not socialism to ask them to pay something.