Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Do the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes?
Do the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes?
Jan 18, 2026 3:25 PM

During her presidential campaign, Sec. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said she’d implement a tax system in which the wealthy “pay their fair share in taxes.” Expecting the rich to pay what is “fair” is not asking to much of them. But one question that is rarely considered is, “What if they already do pay their fair share?”

Before we can determine whether the rich pay enough we have to first ask what would be “fair.” How much of total tax revenues should, say, the top one percent of households pay? Five percent? 10 percent? 20 percent?

According to new IRS statistics from 2014 tax returns, the top one percent of households paid almost 40 percent of all e taxes collected by the federal government.

In 2014, 139,562,034 filed an e tax return, putting just under 1.4 million people into the category of “one percenters.” They earned 20.58 percent of all e and paid 39.48 percent of the taxes. The average adjusted gross e (AGI) for the group was $465,626 (the “poorest” people in the group had an AGI of $257,110).

This chart by the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubinhighlights that the top 25 percent (avg. AGI: $77, 714) paid nearly 86.78 percent of all e taxes.

As Rubin says, “So when we talk about the individual e tax, we’re mostly talking about how we tax e households, because that’s where the bulk of the e is and where the tax revenue is.”

It makes sense that e households would pay more in e taxes since, to paraphrase the bank robber Willie Sutton, “that’s where the money is.” Yet there is more to consider in assessing tax fairness than merely whether e earners are paying enough.

As Abraham Kuyper famously said, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” This is important consideration for Christians to keep in mind when we think about money, especially when we think about how to “redistribute” the e of our neighbor. Their e—like our es from and is owned by God. How it should be spent is ultimately the Lord’s prerogative. We don’t have free reign to write a check to the IRS from our neighbor’s bank account.

This does not mean, of course, that we shouldn’t expect those who have been blessed financially to help share the burden of funding our government. What it does mean, though, is that when we think about at what level of funding we need to perform proper government functions we must not assume that merely because our neighbors have high earnings we are justified in taking from them whatever we want.

When we think about what constitutes a fair system of taxation we must not only ask whether the wealthy are paying their “fair share” but also whether our system is fair to those to whom God has given much.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Too poor to be Catholic?
Reporting on an act of vandalism on the cathedral of Buenos Aires, Reuters asserts that Latin America is a region “whose poor and hungry often cannot afford to follow Roman Catholic doctrine.” How’s that??? Reuters does not expand on its theology, but we can take a guess at what this all implies. The poor and hungry cannot be expected to follow the Catholic Church’s teachings on abortion and contraception, because we all know that poverty and hunger are alleviated by...
Acton staff on Pope Benedict XVI
Rev. Robert Sirico has been mentary in a number of media outlets. Today Rev. Sirico appeared on BBC America and The Laura Ingraham Show. Research fellow Kevin Schmiesing wrote an op-ed appearing in the Detroit News, “New pope starts debate on direction of Catholic Church”. Director of research Samuel Gregg also wrote a short reflection for the Detroit News, “Reaction on the streets of Rome”. ...
C. S. Lewis on American public education
Some might be acquainted with the argument about education that C. S. Lewis makes in his The Abolition of Man, especially his idea of “men without chests.” If you haven’t read it, please do, it’s well worth the time. But many are probably not familiar with Lewis’ view of the specifically American educational system. To this end, I’ll share some representative sections from a pair of Lewis’ works below. First, we have the Preface to Lewis’ “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,”...
Europe in a crisis of cultures
Excellent and ments from Cardinal Ratzinger from the conference held on April 1, 2005, at the Monastery of St. Scholastica, Subiaco, Italy. The entire text will be published by Cantagalli Editore, Italy. Full text of the extract available from the Seattle Catholic : The true contrariety which characterizes the world of today is not that among diverse religious cultures, but that between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on the one hand, and the...
washingtonpost.com – Live online
Join Rev. Robert Sirico for a live chat at 11 am ET this morning hosted by Live Online at , “Insight on the New Pope.” ...
Lamenting loss
The Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), and the broader munity, has lost two leaders within the space of a few months. President Diane Knippers, “an intellectual heavyweight who rallied opposition to the liberal drift of mainline churches,” passed away Monday at the age of 53. Ed Robb, co-founder of the IRD in 1981, also died recently, passing away on December 14. ...
God, man, and the environment
On the occasion of the Earth Day celebrations this year, Dr. Samuel Gregg reflects on the role of people of faith in environmental discussions. The exercise of legitimate human dominion over creation “must be actualized in accordance with the requirements of God’s divine law,” he writes. Read the full text here. ...
Economics of martyrdom
Although purporting to be a post about the “economics of religion,” EconLog’s Bryan Caplan discusses what is really the “economics of martyrdom,” or, to be even more accurate, the “economics of a particular type of ‘martyrdom,’ suicide terrorism.” ments are in reaction to a paper by Lawrence Iannaccone, “The Market for Martyrs.” The pressing question, according to Caplan, is e American opponents of abortion engage in almost no terrorism, much less suicidal terrorism?” And his answer is, “Despite their fiery...
IRS cash assistance problems – mine and theirs
The days following April 15 (and our tax bill, again) I question the government behemoth and how it takes so much of MY money to feed it. My parents struggled financially; they couldn’t send me to college. But I received a great debate scholarship, worked year round and went to grad school too. That self-sufficiency, success model that my husband and I followed means that by 2004 we were increasingly penalized for our success. We can’t make all we can...
Benedict XVI and freedom
Acton adjuct scholar Alejandro Chafuen argues that the new pope places the concept of freedom centrally to his thinking. And “with es an incalculability — and thus the world can never be reduced to mathematical logic,” writes Chafuen. Read the full text here. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved