# Average Total Taxes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 5, 2012, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479 "2012-01-05T07:57:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![sbright33](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@sbright33](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbright33)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/141 "2012-02-09T23:51:25Z")
FINALLY someone who understands simple math. I also agree with the latter half of your statment. Thanks Sitnam!!! Now if only Ravenman and the others can do this without arguing. What number do we use for the total government tax? There are only a few choices. Total income? That one is easy. Let’s do this. Again? I tried earlier. Let’s see if we can all get the same answer in percent. It might not matter to you. But it is revealing! If you a wealthy person who pays the average percent. And you have no under the table income… This number is important to understand! Yet nobody knows it. I haven’t met another person who did this division. I admit we get some benefits or returns from these taxes. They are not all wasted. That is not what I’m discussing here. ---
**Author:** ![sbright33](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@sbright33](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbright33)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2012, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/142 "2012-02-09T23:56:47Z")
Keep in mind that half the people pay MORE than the average rate! That’s not exactly true of course. But it’s close. This is the number I’m interested in. Half the dollars paid are at more than this average rate as a ratio or percent! ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/143 "2012-02-10T00:01:09Z")
> [@sbright33](#): > > Keep in mind that half the people pay MORE than the average rate! Do you know what the word “average” means? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/144 "2012-02-10T00:18:33Z")
> [@sbright33](#): > > FINALLY someone who understands simple math. I also agree with the latter half of your statment. Thanks Sitnam!!! Um… you understand that **Sitnam** was exhorting YOU to do better math? Right? I guess it wasn’t clear from the post. Lots of people have done the division. Fortunately, they’ve done it with better numbers than you have. ---
**Author:** ![sbright33](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@sbright33](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbright33)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/145 "2012-02-10T00:19:42Z")
It can be mean, mode, or median. It’s ambiguous. I’m interested in the one where you divide the 2 big numbers as Sitnam suggested. Let’s just do it already? Anybody? ---
**Author:** ![sbright33](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@sbright33](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbright33)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/146 "2012-02-10T00:21:33Z")
OK AntiBob let’s do it again, with your numbers. I didn’t realize there were so many possibilities to use. Citations please. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/147 "2012-02-10T02:25:03Z")
> [@sbright33](#): > > OK AntiBob let’s do it again, with your numbers. I didn’t realize there were so many possibilities to use. Citations please. Sure. Nothing more fun than running numbers. 😉 For kicks and grins (and because the numbers are more readily available), let’s use my own state: Texas. Caveat: Texas has slightly lower taxes than the “average” state, so that may skew it vs the national average. Then again, Texas is a LARGE income state, so it shouldn’t skew things too much. Either way, we’ll give a very generous margin of 5% to account for it. 2010 Personal Income for the state of Texas ([source](http://www.texasahead.org/economy/indicators/ecoind/ecoind5.html) Texas Comptroller’s office): $980B (rounded down a bit). Notice this is a considerable fraction of the national total personal income. 2010 Federal Revenue (I’ll even be **more** than fair by including business tax collection from Texas ([link](http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/federal_revenue_by_state.php)): $189.1B - this includes inheritance taxes, income, business. 2010 Texas Revenue (also more than fair, as I still include business taxes). Note this includes all the collections from sales, property, use, gasoline, alcohol, tobacco, etc taxes. Basically everything. ([source](http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxbud/revenue.html) Comptroller’s office again): $54.5B. Note you’ll have to remove the federal contribution and adjust back to 2010, which was 7.9% smaller. That still doesn’t include local (which includes property) taxes, but let’s just double the state portion (that’s not even remotely fair to me as property and local sales taxes and fees don’t come close to this, but it won’t affect the outcome). So, 2010 local/property tax income: $110B. Note that according to the Comptroller’s office again ([link](http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/proptax/annual09/ch01.html)), the actual local sales tax and property taxes for 2009 aren’t even half that. Let’s tot all that up. Total tax revenue (fees, sales, property, income, etc, including business): $354.5 Total personal income: $980B Dividing that: 354.5/980 = 36.2%. Adding that 5% (heck, even 10%) gives us significantly less than 50%. And remember, that’s with _ **extremely** _ high and generous taxation figures and somewhat low personal income figures. That includes business taxation as “personal” taxation and more than doubles property and local sales tax and underestimates (by a small amount) personal income. In other words, even 36% is higher than the average total taxes paid by Texans by more than 5%. Taken to the national level, the figure won’t be higher than 45% on average, much less higher than 50%, as you claim. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/148 "2012-02-10T02:51:57Z")
I will add that [this](http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/) site I previously gave indicates a Texas average of 26.6% (federal, state, local), which is close to the figure my sources would have given, if I didn’t fudge the numbers to make the percentage higher. It also gives an overall US average of 27.9%, meaning that, yes, Texas is a low tax state and, no, limiting to the one state didn’t swing the result more than 5%. The page does explain that it computes the number by taking total personal income and dividing by taxes at all levels. So, it’s a mean figure, not a median and may not represent the tax burden faced by some individuals (as I have noted, my own personal average is higher than both the Texas and national averages). Note that the 27.9% figure is almost half the figure you’d like to assign. ---
**Author:** ![sbright33](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@sbright33](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbright33)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/149 "2012-02-10T03:35:33Z")
Thanks for all the effort! You didn’t have to go thru all that work. You can just lookup total taxes for all levels of government combined. It is only 1 number for the entire USA. Not by state. You can see how it breaks down by Fed/state/local. Did you forget SS/FICA in your calculations? Isn’t that at least 10% of income? Again, we have taken something so basic and simple, and made it so complicated, that we never get to the final answer… There is some confusion about my 50% claims. I’d like to skip those for now. But for the record it’s 50% marginal income tax., depending on your tax bracket. And \>50% including ALL taxes, not just income. Those are 2 different assertions. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/150 "2012-02-10T04:00:00Z")
**sbright33** , the answer you seek is .28 ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/151 "2012-02-10T04:05:46Z")
_mean_…though your parsing seems obtuse. Who would use mode for this and with this large a scale why would median make any difference? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/152 "2012-02-10T04:10:05Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > **sbright33** , the answer you seek is .28 Does that include income taxes? Property taxes? Car taxes? Airplane taxes? Airplane seats? Reclining seats? Reclining Buddhas? Tithes for Buddhas? Bananas? Monkeys? Nickels? Euros? Asteroids? Placentas? Drinks with those little umbrellas in them? What about marginal taxes? Does that figure include marginal taxes? Why won’t anyone include marginal taxes? Oh, the humanity of marginal taxes!!! ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/153 "2012-02-10T04:12:14Z")
Yeah, I don’t know why I bothered writing that. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/154 "2012-02-10T04:14:33Z")
He’s not looking for an answer, he’s looking for us to debate his math understanding and how it supports his bias. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/155 "2012-02-10T04:31:43Z")
> [@sbright33](#): > > Did you forget SS/FICA in your calculations? Isn’t that at least 10% of income? Look at my sources again. It’s included. And, no, it’s not at least 10% of income. You keep making this claim, and it’s just demonstrably false. If we go by the old SS number, it’s 6.2% to the employee and FICA is 1.45% . SS is actually 12.4%, but half is paid by the employer, meaning only 6.2% is paid by the employee. In 2011 (and maybe in 2012), the rate paid by employees is reduced to 4.2%. So, the (maximum) SS/FFICA portion even before the 2011 tax year is 7.65%. This last year it’s (maximum) 5.65%. I note the “maximum” because if you are in the top brackets, you aren’t paying 7.65% but potentially much lower. For example, if you somehow had a $1 million salary, your SS/FICA contribution pre-2011 would be about 2% and 2011 would be less than 1.9%. This is one of the reasons your claims are exasperating. You get some fundamental numbers wrong without giving any justification for them. > [@sbright33](#): > > Again, we have taken something so basic and simple, and made it so complicated, that we never get to the final answer… Nope. You’re trying to complicate what is mostly a simple question. [For the 3rd time, I’ll point you to this site](http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/), which does the same breakdown and summarizes the result by the entire US and by state. > [@sbright33](#): > > But for the record it’s 50% marginal income tax., depending on your tax bracket. Nice Goal Post Shifting. Sure, marginal taxes were a part of your original post, but I’ll quote YOU about the “total-tax-for-the-average-American” in the VERY FIRST POST IN THIS THREAD: > [@sbright33](#): > > Is it simple to calculate the Total-tax-for-the-average-American? How many people can estimate the correct answer? I bet almost nobody. Let’s find out. I think the range of answers, or guesses, will be quite wide. While “marginal” rates did EVENTUALLY get to be a discussion topic, you started out with total taxes. As more proof, [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14637076&postcount=57) post earlier in THIS VERY THREAD where you’re clearly talking about TOTAL taxes, rather than marginal: > [@sbright33](#): > > According to this: > [http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Chapter4.shtml](http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Chapter4.shtml) > > Individual income tax is about 1/2 including SS/FICA of 15%. > But this totally confuses the issue because it is Federal only. > > Ad valorem is mostly not Federal. It’s not simple to calculate! Or even [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14705041&postcount=106) post IN THIS VERY THREAD where it’s clear you’re talking about total taxes rather than marginal: > [@sbright33](#): > > I am not debating your personal income or what portion of the government spending is due to your existence on the earth. I am talking Totals. The total government spending divided by total income of all people here in USA. > > 50% It’s only in [post #120](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14706588&postcount=120) that was started in another thread and merged into this one that things finally shift to marginal. And, for reference, that hypothetical $200k earner in post 120 would in Texas (including several lawyer friends of mine and fellow people in the oil business) not pay anything close to 50% marginal out of their paychecks in taxes. > [@sbright33](#): > > And \>50% including ALL taxes, not just income. More goal-post shifting. At one point, you wanted to know about how much was taken out of paychecks: > [@sbright33](#): > > Let’s talk about paychecks only for a moment. Take home pay. The amount you deposit when you cash your check. You do not agree that marginal tax is \>50% for many people? 35% + 15% for SSFICA. Assuming the correct number of dependents on your W-2. The answer is less than 50% for most people, since property and sales taxes are NOT included in paychecks. And if you consider them, you’re no longer talking about “marginal” taxes at all, unless it’s with some bizarre calculus of personal taxes that even an accountant couldn’t unfold. Is it possible for some individual who happens to live in the wrong city to pay more than 50% of a single paycheck in taxes? Maybe. But you’d need a large city income tax, a large state income tax, large property taxes, and be in the top US federal income bracket. Maybe New York City. And NYC is hardly representative of the country at large, no matter what they think of themselves. And it’s still a far cry from the idea that “most” people make that kind of money or pay those rates (most of those who do make that kind of bank do so from capital gains). At any rate, it’s not true for most states. It’s certainly not true in Texas. And even for those New Yorkers, there’s a reason a good number of them live on Long Island or even New Jersey or Connecticut. Their combined personal tax burdens end up being less. > [@Sitnam](#): > > He’s not looking for an answer, he’s looking for us to debate his math understanding and how it supports his bias. Yeah, I get that. But I despise bad arithmetic and poorly researched numbers. I mean, anybody could friggin’ Google the SS/FICA rates. They’re not exactly secret knowledge. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/156 "2012-02-10T04:40:07Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > I mean, anybody could friggin’ Google the SS/FICA rates. They’re not exactly secret knowledge. :smack: I think he’s assuming that if one’s employer didn’t have to pay their share of SS/FICA that they would, out of the kindness of their heart, pass it on to the employee. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/157 "2012-02-10T04:45:31Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I think he’s assuming that if one’s employer didn’t have to pay their share of SS/FICA that they would, out of the kindness of their heart, pass it on to the employee. Still doesn’t make sense. If you’re in the 35% federal bracket, your marginal SS/FICA contribute is FICA only since you don’t pay SS most of the year and “most” employees wouldn’t have to worry about it. At that point, you’d be discussing some unusual situations, while **sbright33** has been clearly trying to make this the story of a “typical” $200k+ employee and keeps shifting goalposts until the situation fits, which reduces the number of people involved to a few rich fatcats in NYC, if even that. Sometimes a nonsensical argument is a cigar. Or something like that. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/158 "2012-02-10T16:57:18Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I think he’s assuming that if one’s employer didn’t have to pay their share of SS/FICA that they would, out of the kindness of their heart, pass it on to the employee. In addition, he’s not even counting it as part of the employee’s income (I know I always chime in with this, but this time it impacts the calculation more than usual.) If you count the employer’s share of payroll tax as a tax on the employee, you have to count it as income from the employee as well. Normally this would not make too much of a difference in the calculations, but if tax rates were around the 50% mark, a marginal tax rate of 35% would not be 50% once you include all payroll taxes, but rather around 46% tax rate, if you remember to count the employer’s share of payroll tax as part of the employee’s income. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/159 "2012-02-10T19:07:30Z")
> [@sbright33](#): > > For now let’s leave off Social Security FICA contributions. This amount is almost exactly 15% for everybody if you assume you’d be paid the employers portion instead of having it for your retirement. Some may argue we get this money back, but without interest. I assert since it’s mandatory, it is more like a tax than an optional retirement investment. The funds are mixed together with our federal budget. Either way we will keep this 15% separate and add it back in the end. > > . Is this like a physics question where you ignore friction? Because it doesn’t work if you ignore friction. It’s a nonsense question And your assumptions are wrong. It’s far more than 15% for the self employed, far less than that for anyone living primarily off investment income. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479/160 "2012-02-10T19:31:32Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Is this like a physics question where you ignore friction? Because it doesn’t work if you ignore friction. It’s a nonsense question And your assumptions are wrong. It’s far more than 15% for the self employed, far less than that for anyone living primarily off investment income. Just a nitpick: for the self-employed, it’s 12.4% for SS (though less in 2011 and presumably this year due to the tax break) and 2.9% for FICA for a total of 15.3% total. While 15.3% is certainly greater than 15%, it’s hardly “far” more than 15%. And certainly the marginal rate for the hypothetical $200k self-employed earner is only the 2.9% for FICA, as the SS contribution craps out around $106k. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/average-total-taxes/608479.md?page=7)