The growth in the untaxed under President Bush

Rich Lowry:

SHOULD non-taxpayers get a tax "rebate"? That was the revealing sticking point in the Washington debate over an economic-stimulus package.

Democrats insisted on spreading the rebate to people who don't pay the federal income tax for a simple reason - there are so many of them.

A literal rebate - in the sense of giving back a bit of what people actually pay - was objectionable because it would exclude the 40 percent of US households that pay no federal income tax at all.

That fact is worth noting because it puts the lie to the notion that the federal tax code is a vampirish scheme by Republican economic elites to privilege the rich at the expense of the poor. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards can barely say the word "taxes" without retailing some version of this tale, which is detached from reality and has been getting steadily more so.

The number of people on the lower end of the income scale exempt from federal income taxes has been increasing - while the share of the federal income tax burden borne by higher-end taxpayers has gone up. If this is the fruit of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush's class warfare on behalf of the wealthy, the boys down at the yacht club have to be bitterly disappointed.

A study by the Tax Foundation (of all taxes, not just federal income taxes) found that between 1991 and 2004, "the only income group whose share of total taxes increased was the highest income quintile." The Congressional Budget Office reports that the top 40 percent of taxpayers paid 99.1 percent of federal income taxes in 2004, leaving the other 60 percent to pay .9 percent.

The wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers - the focus of so much Democratic ire - pay nearly 40 percent of federal income taxes, and about as much as the entirety of the bottom 95 percent.

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My question for Democrats who claim the rich are not paying their fair share is what percentage of total taxes should the rich be paying?