Manhattan Institute:  The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays?, by
Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal):

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today, and
tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in
the long run is to cut the tax rates…. [A]n economy constrained by high
tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just
as it will never create enough jobs or enough profits.” —John F.
Kennedy, 1963

Even if most policymakers and members of the public
instinctively understand the wisdom of President Kennedy’s words, tax
rates are set to go way up, not down, next year because of the scheduled
expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the beginning of 2013. The Obamacare
law also raises tax rates on wealthy individuals by an additional 3.8
percentage points next year. President Obama and others in Congress
argue that these higher tax rates are justified because of the growing
consensus that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Unless we
do something to spread the burden more equitably, the argument goes,
American society will become more unfair and the economy more
unsustainable with each passing year.

At first glance, the tax rate issue seems inseparable from the tax
fairness issue, since higher taxes are expected to shift society’s
wealth from the private sector to the public sector, where, broadly
speaking, it is redistributed to lower-wage earners and the needy. In
reality, the people at the bottom of the scale have benefited directly
and indirectly from every tax rate reduction dating back to Kennedy’s
rate reductions in the early 1960s and through the tax cuts adopted
early in the administration of George W. Bush. If those lower rates,
along with the Alternative Minimum Tax fix, are allowed to expire, the
poor will be burdened even more than the wealthy because the whole
economic pie will shrink. …

Below are a series of statements reflecting popular conceptions and
misconceptions about the impact of tax rates on economic productivity
and fairness. We’ll address these statements (and debunk attendant
myths) one at a time.

1. To become fairer, the tax code needs to tax the rich more heavily.

2. The rich are paying less in income taxes than they have in the past 50 years.

3. When all the other taxes are counted, the rich get off easy.

4. Tax cuts are just Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich.

5. Lower tax rates can make the tax burden fairer.

6. All those tax cuts created deficits that have mortgaged our children’s future.

7. Ordinary Americans pay more than their fair share of taxes.

8. The 15 percent tax on investment income, which is well below
the income-tax rate that most salaried workers pay, is a gift to the
wealthy.

9. A higher capital-gains rate would just level the playing field.

10. The "wealthy" are likely to be the people
next door.

11. It is increasingly harder to climb the economic ladder, and changing the tax code will help.