This article will not deal with the other 50 percent. The half that included Social Insurance or payroll taxes (at 32 percent), Corporate taxes (at 10 percent) and Excise or All Other taxes (at 8 percent).

During the debates and news about refunds, we also heard that there would be 90 or 100 million people who could expect a tax refund. These are the people who paid personal income tax in fiscal 2000. Let's take the 100 million figure just because it's another nice round number.

One trillion dollars revenue divided by 100 million taxpayers gives an average of $10,000 per taxpayer. Of course, you can easily see whether you fall above or below this ten grand average and by how much. It should give you some inkling of who's paying the most in income tax. A first clue, so to speak.

It's also interesting that the Department of Labor reports 141 million working people in the country. Each of these people pay 15.3 percent of their cost of employment in payroll taxes, but that's part of the other half of government revenue. We're not counting that here. What's interesting is that with all the layoffs we've had lately there must be about 40 million who don't pay any income taxes at all. Either because they don't make enough or haven't yet turned in year 2000 tax reports.

It's also interesting that the 2000 Census reported an estimated 281,421,906 people in the country. If we round this figure to 282 million it would mean that exactly half of the population is not gainfully employed. With 141 million workers, exactly half of the people in this country (282 minus 141 million) do not work because they are either too young, too old, disabled, just plain lazy or are in some nefarious business and not reporting anything but their payroll taxes. Can there be that many people working for tips?

As a result, we've got a country where half of the people are unemployed and only about a third of the people pay income taxes. In a chart, it would look like this:

When the government pays people refunds on their income tax reports, money their employers sent the government under income tax, that refund comes out of this year's fiscal budget, not the year 2000 above. Refunds from the previous year, fiscal 1999, would however be included in this chart. It's just a matter of whether they balance out, but since revenue increased over 1999 it's reasonable to expect refunds increased proportionately, decreasing the blue section above.

Now, everybody who paid income taxes for last year knows exactly what he or she paid. If not, you can look it up on your W-2 or copies of the form you sent in to the government before midnight of April 15th. And everybody took all of the deductions allowed and probably fudged a little. The government expects you to cheat. They allow for it. And it has a benefit for them. No one who made some claims for deductions that would be difficult to prove wants to call the government's attention to themselves. Most will sit quietly and not complain about the most obvious injustices because they're afraid the government might go over their taxes with a fine tooth comb.

During fiscal 2000, the government had a surplus of $236.9 billion. Of this surplus, $87 billion came from personal income tax overcharges and $149.8 billion from entitlements like payroll tax overpayments.

You can be certain that the government waited to see how much the refunds on April 15th tax reports added up to before they decided how much of a tax cut they would give this year, fiscal 2001. Having then decided on $300 per taxpayer, and $500 for single mothers, we have a total of about $40 billion that they're willing to give up. That would be less than half of last year's overcharge and considerably less than this year's.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the "surplus" in income taxes for this year, fiscal 2001, at $107 billion. That means with a $40 billion tax break, they're still keeping $67 billion for themselves. Of course, as of July 1st, tax brackets will also begin coming down somewhat, but not again until 2003. With six months to go in the taxpayer's fiscal year, we'll see how much this adds up to. With only three months to go in the government's fiscal year, it will be obvious shortly. Want to bet that they'll still have at least a $50 billion surplus in income taxes this year?

The republicans claim that the wealthy pay most of the income taxes. They base this on the tax brackets—not how much the rich are able to shelter or avoid. For instance, the CEO for Ford Motor Company was reported to have a salary of $900 million per year. In the 40 percent bracket, this would mean a tax payment of $360 million. Do you believe he paid that much?

The democrats don't deny that the wealthy pay the heaviest load, only that they are so rich they don't need a tax break. And neither party is going to do what's fair.

The federal government has the resources, expertise, and ability to make taxes come in within one or two percent of their budgets. Plus, they have the ability to instantly raise taxes or borrow money to tide them over any accidental or unanticipated shortfall. There is no excuse for surpluses in the hundreds of billions except paying down the phenomenal national debt they've run up, and doing so without tightening their own belts one iota.