The Philadelphia Inquirer: As Wealth Shifts, States Struggle to Tax Rich, Poor
media mentionThe growing concentration of income among the richest Americans has made it tougher for states to fund their budgets, because of the way most states fund public services, writes Gabriel J. Petek, San Francisco-based primary credit analyst for Standard & Poor’s Rating Services.
Separately, WalletHub, a Washington-based consumer credit data service owned by ex-Capital One Bank executive Odysseas Papadimitriou’s Evolution Finance, in a new report cites data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (which generally supports higher taxes on higher incomes) showing that poor people (the lowest-income 20 percent of the people) as a group pay more than 10 cents of every dollar of their income to state and local governments through taxes, fees and other public charges — while rich people in the top 1 percent pay only about 5 cents.