International Business Times: Closing Tax Gap Would Reap $200B a Year

Last month, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the poorest 20 percent of households pay on average more than twice the effective state and local tax rate (10.9 percent) as the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (5.4 percent). The report out Friday from Good Jobs First and the Keystone Research Center finds that if tax laws were changed to compel the highest income earners to pay the same rate as everyone else, states and localities would rake in more than $200 billion a year in new revenue. If just the top 1 percent of earners were compelled to pay the typical middle-class tax rate, the report says the change would raise more than $88 billion in revenues.

Read more