I'm betting on NO!
Fact Checker
The truth behind the rhetoric.
By Glenn Kessler
Do billionaires pay just 8 percent in taxes? Not really
There are some “facts” that President Biden likes to recite in almost every speech. In the past year, in more than 30 appearances, the president has referred to billionaires paying about 8 percent in federal income taxes. He said it in his last State of the Union address, and odds are he will say it again when he addresses Congress in March.
But if you check Treasury Department calculations for what the richest Americans already pay in taxes, you would see that the top 1 percent pay in excess of 20 percent in income taxes and more than 30 percent in all federal taxes. Even if you drill down to the top 400 wealthiest taxpayers, they paid an effective tax rate of 23.1 percent in 2014 (the last available year). These taxpayers — with $127 billion of income — that year paid $29.4 billion in income taxes, or more than 2 percent of all income taxes, the IRS said. That’s more than the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers combined.
Here’s the funny thing: Biden’s 8 percent estimate is derived from that same tax data on the top 400 taxpayers. So what’s going on? The president is describing a tax system that he wishes existed — not the system in place.
You can read our full report — and find out the Pinocchio rating for the president’s statement — by clicking this link.