The above table was put together by yours truly from the latest Internal Revenue Service numbers for 2007.  All the numbers I have used in the above illustration are readily available on the IRS site.  I have calculated the percentage of revenue derived from each "income bracket" as well as the "average tax" paid by the perspective bracket.  Please note that I did not break this down by the current tax bracket structure, but by the same adjusted gross income (AGI) strata that is used by the IRS and Census Bureau. 

For the record, the following are the current income tax brackets according to the IRS for a Married couple filing jointly:

$0 - $15,650	10% of the amount over zero
$15,650 - $63,700	$1,565 + 15% of the amount over $15,650
$63,700 - $128,500	$8,722.50 + 25% of the amount over $63,700
$128,500 - $195,850	$24,972.50 + 28% of the amount over $128,500
$195,850 - $349,700	$43,830.50 + 33% of the amount over $195,850
$349,700 - no limit	$94,601 + 35% of the amount over $349,700

So with a little math you can do the work to figure out what percentage each bracket would be paying in their AGI.  Note that the progressive feature of the income tax plan taxes the dollar amounts at specific rates.  You can see from the numbers how "only" the top 2.94% of tax payers would be impacted by Obama's "more fair and patriotic" tax plan. That same 2.94% of tax payers current "fair share" is 51.34% of all income taxes paid. (I am using $200,000 AGI and not the higher $250,000 AGI that Obama is claiming so my numbers are much more favorable than Obama-Biden numbers would be.)

So, fairness aside, there are quite a few things to notice here.  Firstly, you can see that it is not really the top 5% of tax payers that Obama-Biden are asking to bare their "fair share" but really less than 3% of tax payers.  By most standards of fairness, 3% baring the burden of over 50% is not "fair".   The redistributionist among us should at least do the general population the service of some transparent honesty and stop calling it "more fair".  It may be politically expedient, it may even be the most pragmatic solution, but by no objective measurement can it be called fair.  The top 3% might even rightfully be able to bare the extra expense, but that does not make it fair.  It may be a brilliant political move to target a small minority segment of the population with a punitive tax structure since even if all of the punished voted against you they could not over power the voice of the 97% who will "benefit".  (If the minority being targeted was chosen for anything other than their economic prowess and productive ability it would be a civil rights issue.)

So the current Obama-Biden proposal would increase top earner brackets by 4.9%, back to the Clinton presidency rates.  Currently that top 3% pays $555,904,228,000.00 in taxes.  Under the new proposal they would pay $583,143,535,172.000.  That is a $27,239,307,172.00 difference, spread over 4,064,884 tax filers or in other words a $6,701.13 average tax increase.  Now if Obama is going to "give" "95%" of American Workers a $1,000.00 tax credit that would equal considerably more than the 27.2 billion dollars he just took from the top 3%.

There were 134,329,872 tax filers last year (not just tax payers) who made less than $200,000.  So 134,329,872 x $1,000 = $134,329,872,000.00.   If my math is right, and it quite possibly could be wrong so double check my figures, that leaves better than a 107 billion dollar short fall? 

So let us take a look at poverty in America.  While you may feel a little weird giving a family making $200,000 another $1000, most American's don't mind helping the truly poor.  According to the Census Bureau, poverty is defined as childless couple having an AGI of $13,450 all the way to a family of eight making $40,085.  Currently, from 2007 tax numbers, there are 37,807,391 tax filers with an AGI of $15,000 or less.  That is 27.32% of all tax filers. (note that there are 2,675,594 tax filers with no adjusted gross income at all included in that number and most earn far more than that but we are dealing with taxable AGI.)

So with the Obama-Biden tax plan we could provide all the current tax filers living in defined poverty $720.48 without going into a deficit. (remember Obama's call to "pay as you go"?).  So there is not even enough revenue generated by "soaking the rich" to give each person living in poverty the $1000 Obama-Biden is promising them?  The bottom ranks of tax filers account for 0.34% of all income tax revenue, or just over 3.5 billion dollars which would be removed from the income side of the register either way. 

So what can we learn from the raw numbers?  We can learn that there is not enough money in the Obama-Biden tax plan to deliver on their promise. Remember, I am only looking at ONE part of the tax plan right now.  When you start looking at corporate taxes, capital gains (won't be many after the market crash), dividend (not many companies delivering dividends) and estate taxes (on dead people worth over 7 million) things get worse not better.  We still have not covered the cost of the national health mandates, "infrastructure" jobs programs or the other "investments" that have been proposed.  The numbers just don't add up.

Obama-Biden has promised the cost cutting scalpel and some Iraq war savings by pulling out.  How will that impact things? Since Obama has not identified a single program or project he would cut, it is hard to use hard numbers, so lets look at one number we have all heard him toss around.  $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq.

If on day one Obama can stop Iraq war funding to the tune of $10 billion, and does not have to shift that expense to Afghanistan as promised, you can stretch and come up with an additional, hypothetical 120 billion.  That, with the 27.2 billion in increase in personal income taxes  could yield 147.2 billion in hypothetical dollars.  Now you can pay for the $1000 dollar refundable tax credit for 95% of Americans and have a whopping $13 billion left over!  Now Obama already said that 18 billion is not really a big deal when addressing earmark spending, but still $13 Billion will be left to fund his other "investment" programs.

Here are the total revenues as projected and their primary sources totaling over $2.4 trillion. Notice one-third of federal revenues come from FICA/Medicare taxes, and are needed to fund Social Security and Medicare programs. (Medicare already is more expensive than Defense and the Iraq war combined).  If you add the Individual Income Taxes and Social Insurance taxes you have 79.2% of total revenues coming from employment taxes already.  And even with these large chunks of change coming out of the economy to fund these programs they still are running massive deficits.

Some other issues to consider:

The interest on the national debt for FY 2007 was $243.7 billion.
The IRS has $345 billion in uncollected taxes.
In FY2007 we budgeted $294 billion for Unemployment and welfare benefits alone.
Now we have a $700 billion dollar bail out to pay for on top of all the other expenses.

Are you starting to see the big picture?  No mater who wins the presidency they will be faced with a check book register mired in red ink and a boat load of promises they can't keep.  John McCain'a proposal will ease the tax burden on the job creators (those making over $200) by basically leaving the current personal income tax system (Bush tax cuts) in place.  Obama will increase the burden on the job creators and borrow against the future generations' American inheritance to provide a meaningless relief to people who are not truly going to benefit beyond a transitory purchase.

Bottom line, the Obama-Biden plan is anti-business and anti-producer. Remember, businesses create jobs, jobs provide tax payers, tax payers fund the system.  If we only create government "make work" jobs for infrastructure improvements, we will have to fund those jobs on the backs of non-government wage earners.  This system has to balance since the government does not produce anything and all of its means have to be taken via taxes and levies.  We can not continue this kind of economic cannibalism and expect prosperity to be the end result.

If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in the comments section.