How the other half pays #nlpoli

Brian Jones.

Statistics Canada can be your friend.  CANSIM 204-0001 to be precise.

You don't have to manipulate numbers.

There are roughly 221, 455 who earn below the $29,600 median income for all tax filers in Newfoundland and Labrador.  The figures are for 2013, but the general pattern still applies.

The average income in that group was $15,900.  The median income (precise half-way point) was $16,600.

Two things:  the average person in this income bracket will NOT pay any of the levy because their gross income is less than the floor on the program.

Second thing:  the amount of gross income for these focus would be something around $3.5 billion if we used the average figure.  That's twice what you claimed.  Note that they pay about five percent of the total provincial income government tax haul.

Among the crowd above the half-way point for income,  you have 197,380 people.  They make - on average - $71,400 each.  That gives you about $14 billion.

No matter how you slice it, the problem is not that we don't take enough from the folks in the top.  The problem is that the people on the lower side of the divide make so very little.  What we should be doing is trying to figure out a way to build those folks up, not find a way to suck more out of the other half.

You see,  those 221,000 folks paid an average of $700 each in federal AND provincial taxes. That's $155 million in total to both governments.  The other half of the population paid $2.8 billion.

If you have people making $3.5 billion who pay $155 million in tax, they are giving, collectively about four percent of their income to income tax.  The folks on the other side of the line are paying 20%, collectively.  That's five times as much.

And you have to remember that the bulk of those folks  on the high side of the divide are making a lot less than the folks on the sunshine list, on average. There's not a lot of room to suck cash from the middle, in other words.

The numbers tell one story, honestly, without any manipulation beyond addition, and the other math functions.

The numbers will lie if you try to do math using ideology.

Don't manipulate numbers, Brian.

-srbp-

A dose of reality for Lorraine and her friends #nlpoli

During Question Period in the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Lorraine Michael asked the finance minister for the information that showed that 35% of the tax filers in the province account for 88% of the government's income tax revenue.

Lorraine should have been able to find the information for herself.

According to Statistics Canada (CANSIM 204-0001), the top 50% of tax filers in 2013 - all 197,380 of them - earned more than $31,400.  They paid an average of $14,200 in federal and provincial taxes and accounted for 94.8% of federal and provincial taxes.

So it isn't much of a stretch to see how a relatively small portion of the folks with an income in the province carry most of the tax burden.

The top 10% of tax filers in Newfoundland and Labrador  - 41,865 people - accounted for 51% of the federal and provincial taxes paid in 2013, the last year for which the table gives figures. They paid an average of $36,500 in federal and provincial income taxes. The thresh-hold to get into the 10% club was $89,200, which is less than Lorraine and her colleagues in the House receive as a base pay.

The median tax paid for the top 10% was $28,600.  That's an interesting figure because the median pre-tax income for the 418,000 or so people who filed taxes in this province in 2013 was $29,300.

But what about that One Percent Club?  Well,  the 3,135 folks who made more than $222,000 paid an average of $114,600 in taxes in 2013.  They accounted for 12.1% of federal and provincial taxes paid.

At the 50% level, 47% of the tax filing population paid 95% of the taxes.  Yes folks, that means about half the folks filing taxes accounted for about five percent of the government's total income tax haul.

At the 10% level, 10% of the tax filers covered 51% of the tax burden.

At the one percent level, 7.5% of the people filing taxes paid 12% of the taxes.

The information in plain view.  It's amazing that Lorraine and her friends find it so hard to believe there is no gigantic, secret stash of money hiding in the very small number of people who make a lot of money.

-srbp-