Buffett with Pres. Obama in 2010 (White House)
Assholes.
Republicans say Buffett—the public face of Obama’s proposed "Buffett rule" to increase taxes on the wealthy—needs to reveal his finances if his views on tax rates are going to serve as the basis for Obama administration policy.
"Will Warren Buffett release his tax returns so we can see why he should be the standard for tax policy?" Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) questioned in a tweet Thursday.
Obviously, they're not reading Krugman (but I think we already knew that).
[...] 40 percent of taxpayers with incomes between 30K and 40K pay more than 12.9 percent of their income in income and payroll taxes; meanwhile, 25 percent of people with incomes over $1M pay less than 12.6 percent of their income in these taxes. This suggests that there are a lot of very-high-income guys paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.[...]
Taken as a whole, the US tax system is probably somewhat progressive—but not as much as you might think, especially at the upper end, and very erratically. There are a lot of rich people basically free-riding on the system.