Road to Ruin

If you've wondered why it seems that the tax burden falls more and more on the middle class and the poor, you're not alone. Everyone knows that BushCo. structured their tax cuts to benefit the top 1% of income earners, what you may not have realized is that tax laws for years have been changing so that corporations are paying less and less taxes.

How much less?

How about NONE.

Here's the headline from an article (subscription) in this morning's Wall Street Journal: "Many Companies Avoided Taxes Even as Profits Soared in Boom."

More than 60% of U.S. corporations didn't pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000, years when the economy boomed and corporate profits soared, the investigative arm of Congress reported.

The disclosures from the General Accounting Office are certain to fuel the debate over corporate tax payments in the presidential campaign. Corporate tax receipts have shrunk markedly as a share of overall federal revenue in recent years, and were particularly depressed when the economy soured. By 2003, they had fallen to just 7.4% of overall federal receipts, the lowest rate since 1983, and the second-lowest rate since 1934, federal budget officials say.

So let me get this straight: the top 1% of earners, who garner something like 20% or more of all income, pay less and less; corporations, who made trillions of dollars in that time paid less and less; government spending increased by a minimum of 3% - 4% and often more (and of course Congress voted itself at least one pay raise during that time).

So who gets stuck with the bill?

Class warfare my ass.