NYT is trying to claim the 400 wealthiest Americans paid lower tax rate than bottom 50%

The piece is getting torn to shreds by tax economists. The author of the article, Gabriel Zucman, is a well known left wing economist with an agenda.

Here is the chart from the article. I refuse to link the article itself because it is so poorly argued





Here is what Mr. Zucman did to get his absurd chart

1) he *left out* transfer payments that the tax code facilitates (EITC, child credit, etc). Including these items would have sent the bottom 50% tax rate into the negative range.

2) his previous research from 2018 found that the there *has not* been a reduction in the tax burden of the 400 richest Americans since 1962.



Unhappy that this findings did not show what he wanted it to show, he recalculated the data with the unrealistic assumption that 100% of the cooperate tax burden is paid by shareholders (an insane assumption). This “tweak” allowed Mr. Zucman to get the result he wanted, as the below chart shows




3) Mr. Zucman is dividing the payroll taxes paid by the 400 richest Americans by their total income rather than dividing it by the income where the cap takes place. ($169,000) This allows Zucman to assert that the richest 400 Americans basically have a 0% payroll tax. What he ignores is that benefits are capped as well.


What a fricking fraud