Because of the recent Republican tax cuts, we have entered an era of perpetual trillion-dollar federal deficits. It’s time we stopped this nonsense and put our economic house in order.
In 2016, the latest year for which we have numbers, 1,408,888 tax returns were filed by the top 1 percent. Their total adjusted gross income (AGI) was roughly $2 trillion. Increasing their effective tax rate from 27 percent to 40 percent would add $260 billion to our revenues.
The next 4 percent of tax returns totaled 5,635,551 returns, with total AGI of $1.57 trillion. Increasing their effective tax rate from 19 percent to 35 percent would add $251 billion to our revenues.