Treasury Dept. Used For Bush Election Campaign

The Treasury Department fact sheet continues a trend by the Administration and the Treasury Department’s public affairs office of using statistics selectively to create questionable impressions about the nature of the nation’s tax burden and the impact of the tax cuts enacted since 2001. In general, the overall tax system is only modestly progressive. The share of federal taxes that high-income households pay has risen in recent decades, but this is in significant part because these households’ incomes have risen more rapidly than everyone else’s and they now receive a substantially larger share of the national income.

Moreover, the percentage of income that high-income households pay in federal taxes has been declining since 1996, was already lower in 2001 than in any year since 1992, and has fallen significantly further since 2001 as more tax cuts have taken effect.