The share of Americans who pay federal income tax

IN REMARKS at a fund-raising event earlier this year, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president, claimed that 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax. According to the Tax Policy Center, he is largely correct, as the chart on the left shows. But most Americans do pay federal taxes of some sort, such as payroll taxes, and nearly all pay sales taxes. The increase in the number of people who do not pay federal income tax is largely due to efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to lower the tax burden of low-income workers. In 1986, for example, Ronald Reagan bragged that as a result of his tax reforms "millions of working poor will be completely dropped from the tax rolls". Mr Romney believes there is a sense of victimhood and dependency amongst the non-payers. But the Republican nominee should take care in disparaging this portion of the electorate. In 2008 the Tax Foundation found that many of those who do not pay federal income tax live in states that tend to vote Republican.