Thursday, September 20, 2012

Tax Policy Center analysis details the '47 percent'

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s comment that 47 percent of voters pay no income tax appears to come from a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The most recent study by the Center, in 2011, found that 46 percent of taxpayers would not be eligible to pay the federal individual income tax either because of their low income or owing to specific tax breaks.
But in 2009, it estimated that threshold was set at 47 percent.

Of that group, roughly half will not pay taxes because their income is below $26,400.

In 2011, a family with two children making less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax, the center said. Such a family would get the $11,600 standard deduction, as well as four exemptions of $3,700 each that would reduce its taxable income to zero.

“The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax,” the group wrote.



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