The Week

□ Teddy Kennedy has lost weight. The Republic is in danger.

□ IRS data show that the income-tax burden again fell significantly for the poor and middle-class in 1983, and rose for the rich. In short, the Reagan tax cuts are not “soaking the poor,” as liberal critics would have it, but, rather, are coaxing far greater income taxes from high-income groups, both proportionally and in absolute dollars. The tax burden on all incomes over $50,000 has increased, and the burden on all incomes below $50,000 has fallen. This effect is sharpest at the extremes. Incomes over $1 million account for about twice as much of total income taxes as they did two years earlier, and more than twice as much in absolute dollars. The burden on the lowest incomes, from $0 to $15,000, has fallen from 9.1 per cent to 7.4 per cent of total taxes in two years. Whoever understands these figures and engineers another across-the-board rate cut will lock up the next elections.

Featured Tags

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

□ Teddy Kennedy has lost weight. The Republic is in danger.

□ IRS data show that the income-tax burden again fell significantly for the poor and middle-class in 1983, and rose for the rich. In short, the Reagan tax cuts are not “soaking the poor,” as liberal critics would have it, but, rather, are coaxing far greater income taxes from high-income groups, both proportionally and in absolute dollars. The tax burden on all incomes over $50,000 has increased, and the burden on all incomes below $50,000 has fallen. This effect is sharpest at the extremes. Incomes over $1 million account for about twice as much of total income taxes as they did two years earlier, and more than twice as much in absolute dollars. The burden on the lowest incomes, from $0 to $15,000, has fallen from 9.1 per cent to 7.4 per cent of total taxes in two years. Whoever understands these figures and engineers another across-the-board rate cut will lock up the next elections.