Fun with statistics.................................

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Need to prove a point, there is a statistic handy.  Some times it helps to peer behind the veil.   Like here:

This handy chart could be trotted out as absolute proof that corporations are not paying their fair share of the tax burden.  After all in 1953 corporations paid more than 30% of the collected federal taxes.  Today, corporations are paying only 10% of the collected revenue.  How dare those greedy and evil businesses complain about their tax bite!

Ah, but now, the rest of the story:

"Over the last half-century - particularly the last 30 years - far more businesses have chosen to be LLCs and S-Corps than corporations. S-Corps didn't even exist until the 1950s. Before that, most businesses were taxed as corporations. By the late 1970s, 83% of all businesses were LLCs and S-Corps that passed income to their individual owners. Today, 95% are.

"That shift in business structure explains a lot of why corporate taxes as a percentage of all taxes have plunged. It's not that businesses aren't paying their fair share, like they were in the past. It's that more business income is being taxed as individual income, which doesn't show up in this chart."

Full essay on "Three misconceptions" about our economy, from whence this all came, is here.

thanks