The Birmingham News: The Easiest Budget Fix? Make the Rich Pay Taxes Like the Poor

The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy calculated what Alabamians pay toward those three taxes and broke them down by what are called quintiles – 20 percent chunks of the population.

The first three of those quintiles – 60 percent of the population – pay about 10 percent of their family income in state and local taxes.

And that richest one percent we keep hearing about? If you’re lucky enough to be in that group, you pay about 3.8 percent of your income in state and local taxes.

In short, the more money you make, the smaller the chunk you have to pay in taxes.

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