On average, the lowest-income 20 percent of taxpayers face a state and local tax rate nearly 60 percent higher than the top 1 percent of households, according to a study by the Institue on Taxation and Economic Policy.
The nationwide average effective state and local tax rate paid by residents to their home states is 11.3 percent for the lowest-income 20 percent of individuals and families, 10.5 percent for the middle 20 percent, and 7.2 percent for the top 1 percent.
So-o it seems that if I offer to replace all the plethora of taxes with the same income tax for everybody, I’d be offering an improvement even in leftist terms. Good to know.
And you know, that’s how any complexity works in bureaucracies and central regulation. It gets bent by interests and power, because those are easier to focus on every small part, and public attention is not.