Bartlett: Who Doesn’t Pay Income Taxes

Bruce Bartlett writes:

Conservatives are fond of railing against those who are able to legally avoid paying federal income taxes. The Wall Street Journal routinely refers to them as “lucky duckies.”

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, recently asserted that it was appalling that about half of all those who file federal income tax returns pay nothing and said this was proof that income taxes must not be raised to reduce the deficit, because the burden would necessarily fall on just half of households.

But the growth of the non-income-taxpaying population is largely a result of Republican tax policies. The earned-income tax credit is the main reason those with low incomes are largely exempted from federal income taxes. Originated by Gerald Ford, it was expanded by both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as a better way to help the working poor than raising the minimum wage, which they believed would increase unemployment.

According to the Tax Foundation, in 1974, before the earned-income tax credit was instituted, 19.2 percent of tax filers had no federal income tax liability. This rose to 25.2 percent in 1975 when the credit took effect.

During the 1990s, about 24 percent of filers had no income tax liability, but this number took a big jump during the George W. Bush administration as Republicans added a large child credit to the tax code. The percentage of filers with no income tax liability rose to 36.3 percent in 2008, from 25.2 percent in 2000.