47% of American Households Who Pay Owe No Income Tax

And that factoid is up from 38% in 2007 but while the figure has "become shorthand for the notion that the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole ... Neither one of those ideas is true. They rely on a cleverly selective reading of the facts. So does the 47% number" according to David Leonhard's New York Times article. One might say a clever disclosure of the facts as SOP for cable news talking heads fodder. See also Paul Caron's post and his follow-up post on TaxProf Blog.

BTW, you might want to check out TaxProf Blog's annual ritual of reporting the President's and Vice-President's income tax returns, the latest being Obama and Biden Release Tax Returns as well as Caron's post on President Obama's Tax Treatment of His 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. [JH]