By All Means Raise Mitt Romney’s Taxes: But please spare the middle class trying to become rich like him

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Democrats eliminated the income cap for Medicare payroll taxes of 1.45% (2.9% including employer) in 1993, but have you noticed a Democratic desire to reform Medicare? They ran against Mr. Romney in 2012 by saying his modest reform amounted to throwing grandma off a cliff.

The Medicare tax increase has merely become another marginal-rate tax hike on work. The Social Security payroll tax is 6.2% each for employee and employer, so lifting the income cap on that tax on the working middle class would be even more onerous."

"The top 1% paid an average tax rate of 26.1% in 2022. Their top marginal income-tax rate is far higher, and in New York and California can exceed 50%. The top 10% paid an average tax rate of 21.1%, while the bottom 50% paid 3.74% on average."

"As a share of total adjusted gross income reported in 2022, the top 1% earned 22.4%, but they paid 40.4% of total income taxes. They paid in taxes nearly double their share of income."

"And the bottom 50%? They reported 11.5% of AGI but paid only 3% of all income taxes."

"The numbers would be less progressive if you include payroll taxes, but not by all that much. Even that 3% overstates how much the bottom 50% pay because “refundable” credits paid to those with no tax liability are treated as spending and aren’t reflected in the IRS numbers."