The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
April 19, 2011

Income For Nation's Wealthy Soars As Tax Rate Falls 
----------------------------------------------------



Newly released tax data shows the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans
has been effectively cut in half since the mid-1990s. In 1995, the
richest 400 Americans paid on average 30 percent of their income in
federal taxes. In 2007, the richest Americans paid less than 17 percent.
During that same period, the combined annual income of the richest 400
Americans soared from $6 billion to $23 billion. On Monday, tax day
protests were held in some 300 cities. Many protesters focused their
attention on Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Google for avoiding to pay
their full share of taxes by using tax code loopholes.

Burchell Marcus: “My name is Burchell Marcus, I’m the community
director for the Borough of Brooklyn. I would like to see my tax dollars
go to education. They’ve been cutting too much money away from
education. Our kids are not being properly educated, right? Instead of
spending the money for the war take that money and put it into the
economy so we can solve the problems here.”



.