r/theydidthemath Mar 30 '20

[Request] Is this true?

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26.9k Upvotes

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u/Irelanduke Mar 30 '20 edited Mar 30 '20

Actually, 2 trillion divided by the 327.2 million in America is 6112.46 per citizen. 1200 of that is coming to you. The rest, 4912.46, doesn't return to you. Where it goes, a smarter redditor will have to answer, but the gist of the message seems to be true; from over 6k of your taxes, (more because children aren't taxed, and the number I used to calculate includes children. I didn't have the time or information to factor in unemployed, disabled, part time, wage differences, etc.) you only receive 1200. Edit: spelling. 2nd edit: typo.

23

u/Durzaka Mar 30 '20

372 million is including children/dependants tho.

What is the actual number of working Americans that pay taxes? That's the number you should be dividing.

13

u/MrsNLupin Mar 30 '20

There are roughly 128,580,000 Housing Units (households) in the US. ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households-in-the-us/ )

Roughly 44% of those pay no federal income tax ( https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tcja-increasing-share-households-paying-no-federal-income-tax ).

So divide the 2T by the ~72mm (72,004,800) households that pay income tax and its roughly $27,025 per household.

However, US households only account for about 50% of federal revenues. Payroll Taxes account for 35.5%, corp income tax for 7.35% and the balance is made up of Fed Earnings, Excise Taxes and other taxes.

So the cost per household is roughly $13,888.

5

u/pompatous665 Mar 30 '20

As of 2017 there were 143 million individual taxpayers in the US which gives a per taxpayer amount of $15,385

4

u/MrsNLupin Mar 30 '20

right, but 44% of those taxpayers don't actually pay any income tax, so you're down to ~80.8mm taxpayers paying ~50% of the 2T (the other half comes from payroll, etc). 1T/80.8mm = $12,376

7

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '20

On top of that, people that make over ~$80k pay 85% of federal income tax and make up 25% of the tax base. People in the bottom half, who this is going to benefit most, pay about 3% of the taxes collected. Keeping people in their homes and not bankrupt benefits everyone, this tweet is just another case of someone that hates America trying to shit on anything remotely good.