BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
It’s income tax season again, but recent reports are saying that doesn’t matter to about half of the country.
Sussex County U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett said in a radio interview earlier this month that half of Americans aren’t paying income taxes. And it looks like statistics are backing his claim up.
According to PolitiFact New Jersey, a Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center report estimated that about 46.4 percent of households would pay no federal income tax for 2011. Roberton Williams of the Tax Center said about half of those were because the homes had no taxable income after subtracting standard deductions and personal exemptions.
Mail Online reported that only 50.5 percent of Americans paid income tax in 2009; the lowest total in about 50 years. They said 151.7 million Americans paid no taxes in 2009, while in 1984, 85 percent of Americans paid.
Heritage Foundation statistics show that 21.8 per cent of U.S. citizens, or a record total of 67.3 million, were getting financial assistance from the government.
