43 Percent Of Americans Don’t Pay Taxes, Down From Mitt Romney’s 47 Percent

43 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes according to a new report from the Tax Policy Center.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the Tax Policy Center spawned the data behind Mitt Romney’s infamous 47 percent comment.

So the good news is that while 43 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes at least that number is down from 47 percent in 2012. The bad news is that the reason 43 percent don’t pay Federal income taxes is because Bush-era tax cuts expired at the behest of the Obama administration. Now everyone is paying more in taxes, including the poor because of increases in payroll taxes.

The Tax Policy Center says, “Many people who pay no income tax simply have too little income to owe tax.” The Federal income tax brackets have been slowly creeping up year after year but rising incomes have been matched, and often beaten, by the rising tide of the cost of living. The government’s official Consumer Price Index has only showed a relatively modest increase in the cost of living, but third party estimates on the real cost of living increase claim large cities are seeing annual cost of living increases ranging from 7.4 to 12.8 percent.

But to say 43 percent of Americans don’t pay Federal income taxes doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes at all. The majority of American workers pay more money for payroll taxes like Social Security and Medicare than they ever pay in Federal income taxes. Only 14 percent of American households do not pay any taxes, but two-thirds of them are elderly. But even the elderly still pay state sales and household taxes. There’s also Federal excise taxes on items like alcohol, gasoline, and cigarettes.

Interestingly enough, because of the complicated IRS tax code around one percent of the 43 percent not paying Federal taxes are people making incomes in the six-figure range:

Are you surprised 43 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes?