While almost half of all Americans do not pay any federal income taxes most Americans do pay some form of taxes in other ways such as in sales tax, payroll tax, state income tax, or property tax.
More precisely is 47% the percentage of all Americans that do not pay any taxes, but many are actually past taxpayers.
Recently when their was so much controversy about former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney for trying to make the American public believe that 47% of the people who do not pay any taxes are simply living off the system. However it is clear that most of the 47% are actually the elderly and students, and so not all people are simply using the system.
The elderly actually make up 10.3% of the portion of people not paying taxes with yearly income for a single person of less then $10,950., and married with joint filing of $20,150. yearly income. Head of household pension benefits of $13,650. annually, and so their is no requirement to file, and Social Security than is not taxable.
The non elderly some of which are under the age of 65 count for just 6.9%, and do not pay any federal income tax due to very low income.
Also for the very low pay, or working only part time people paying into Social Security and Medicare by payroll withholding, but are owing nothing in income tax in the end account for 28.3%.
The “others” category accounts for only about 1%, and are likely to be the unemployed, or receiving pay close to the minimum wage, and as a result do not have enough income to pay any taxes. Additionally self employed people who hope to carry their business losses.
So now even when considering that the rich do pay higher taxes than do the poor the middle class are actually still paying a much higher total percentage of all their income towards taxes.
So approximately 53% of all Americans do pay Federal Income Tax once again with 47% not paying any at all.
The elderly living on Social Security are in a group of 22%, and receiving the Social Security benefit from past payroll taxes that they paid while working, and most of those elderly no longer are working.
These percentages are due in part to the bad recession and slow recovery of the economy. However for everyone that is working over 60% do not pay income tax at all.