SOURCE: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED data set.
In other words, in 2010 the federal government collected about 16 cents of every dollar of income produced in the United States, and spent 25 cents (of which 15 cents were transfer payments). This shortfall required federal borrowing of almost 10 percent of GDP produced that year. The federal government has evolved into a monolith that taxes “Peter” (those with jobs or earning high incomes, or both) to pay “Paul” (primarily senior citizens receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits). In effect, this is an intergenerational transfer scheme that taxes workers and pays older retirees. Retirees, of course, feel entitled to these benefits because they have paid taxes into this system while they worked, and the current workers accept the arrangement so long as they believe benefits will be available when they retire.
The huge expansion of transfer payments has required higher tax rates to help fund them. Recall that in 1937, the original Social Security payroll tax rate for OASDI (old-age, survivors, and disability insurance) was 2 percent. Figure 2.5 shows the payroll tax rates for OASDI and Medicare hospitalization insurance.18 The Social Security tax has risen more than sixfold (from 2.0 percent to 12.4 percent), whereas the Medicare tax went from 0.7 percent when first instituted in 1966 to the current rate of 2.9 percent. Another difference between the two levies is that the Social Security tax has an annual income limit beyond which the wage earner pays no further taxes (in 2010, the amount was $106,800), whereas the Medicare tax has no income limit.
Figure 2.5 SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE TAX RATES, 1937–2010
SOURCE: www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/taxRates.html.
Our Modern Federal Tax System
In 2010, the U.S. federal tax system collected about 90 percent of its revenue from taxes assessed on various types of income. Of that amount, 41 percentage points came from the personal income tax, another 40 percentage points from Social Security and Medicare taxes, and 9 percentage points from the corporate income tax. The remainder of the federal government’s revenue that year (the 10 percent of total revenue that did not come from taxing income) was primarily from taxes on gifts, estates, excise taxes, and customs duties. Therefore, at the federal level, by far the most important item being taxed is income. Since wage income is the major component of household income, work is the predominant economic activity being taxed.
Most of the revenue from federal taxes on income is collected from a fairly small group of taxpayers. In the case of the personal income tax, the reason is because the first several thousand dollars of income are exempted (in 2010, the amount was $18,700 for a married couple with no dependent children), and after that amount is reached, tax rates increase along with income. Even though current top marginal tax rates are considerably lower than they were in the early 1960s, high-income families pay a disproportionate share of personal income taxes. For example, in 2008, the top 1 percent of U.S. income earners (who earned 20 percent of all income) paid 38 percent of the federal personal income tax, whereas the top 5 percent (who earned 38 percent of all income) paid 58 percent of the total.19 For the Social Security and Medicare taxes, the effect is less pronounced because they tax labor income at a constant rate, and the Social Security tax has the income ceiling beyond which earners pay no more taxes that year. Yet it is still true that higher-income earners pay most of the taxes. In 1997, the top 30 percent of wage earners paid an estimated 58.7 percent of all Social Security taxes (Wilson 2000, charts 1 and 2).20
Tax systems structured this way can result in a tyranny of the majority, where the majority of voters impose their will on the minority. To see how that situation can occur, consider a simple case of a country with 100 voters who earn varying amounts of income. This country’s income tax law exempts enough income so that only the top 25 income earners pay income taxes (or pay a disproportionate share of taxes). Thus, the voting population consists of 75 voters who pay no taxes or who pay only small amounts and 25 high-income workers who pay nearly all of the taxes. Now suppose this country’s government is running a budget deficit (perhaps because of burdensome transfer payments to retirees) that causes political leaders to consider higher tax rates as a way to raise additional revenue. A likely outcome is that the 75 voters who are paying small amounts of taxes will support higher tax rates on the 25 who are already paying. The minority (the high-income earners) will oppose this arrangement, but they don’t have the votes to block it. Of course, the situation in the United States is considerably more complicated than this simple example, but the gist of the argument is correct. It helps explain why tax increases are often directed at taxpayers who are a minority of the population. This argument applies to both high-income earners and cigarette smokers, regardless of the rationale offered by their proponents.
Defending the Transfer Payments Status Quo
The U.S. transfer payment expansion took place with widespread public support, and it was funded with income taxes. Social Security and Medicare have been popular programs, in part because many Americans appreciate having a federal “safety net” of pension income and health care insurance during their retirement years.21 Another reason for their popularity is that many beneficiaries collect more during retirement than they paid in taxes while they were working.
Table 2.3 contains calculations on benefits and taxes paid for the Social Security OASDI and Medicare under different income scenarios. These numbers are taken from Steuerle and Rennane (2011) and assume that the income earners paid Social Security and Medicare taxes and that those funds were kept in an account that earned an inflation-adjusted interest rate of 2 percent. The calculated benefit amounts are the funds necessary upon retirement (while still earning 2 percent interest) to pay the beneficiaries’ Social Security and Medicare benefits during their expected retirement years. For example, Case 1 describes a single man who earned the average income each year during his working career (ages 22–64). He retired in 2010 at the age of 65 and began collecting Social Security and Medicare. Assuming he lives the average life expectancy, he loses on Social Security ($290,000 in taxes paid versus $256,000 in benefits) but does well with Medicare ($55,000 paid in taxes versus $161,000 in benefits). The woman in Case 2 earned the same wage as the man in Case 1, which is why she pays the same amount in taxes, but she collects more benefits because of a longer life expectancy.
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