Updated and Previously Suppressed Report Still Finds: Tax Cuts for Rich Only Help the Rich

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/14-0



The US trend to continually lower tax rates for the country's wealthiest in the name of economic growth is deeply flawed, says an updated non-partisan government report that shows tax cuts for the rich—most recently exemplified by the Bush-era tax cuts—serve mostly to increase income inequality by redistributing wealth to the top while doing little or nothing to help the broader economy.


The government report is additionally interesting because an earlier version of it was met with protest when it was first released in the months just ahead of national elections. Ultimately the analysis was pulled because Republican members of Congress, unhappy with its findings, challenged the author's methodology.

Still, the updated report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945 (pdf), eviscerates the redundant rhetoric of the nation's corporate and governing elite that says decreasing the tax rates for the wealthy is good for everyone and gives further support to progressive economic models that have shown such rates simply increase the distance between society's haves and have-nots.

Specifically designed to look for evidence of growth being positively impacted by tax cuts for the rich, the report says there was "no evidence" to be found that "the 65-year reduction in the top statutory tax rates" had done anything to improve wider economic growth.