Reply #32: Recent article on this:

[muriel_volestrangler]

The actual figure of “taxable units” who don’t pay the standard income tax — a taxable unit being a couple filing jointly or a person filing — is somewhere around 38 percent. Even that number is grossly exaggerated, because it excludes what people pay through the payroll tax.
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How much does the payroll tax amount to? Well, last year the standard income tax brought in $1.17 trillion, while the payroll tax brought in $873.4 billion.
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Last year alone, $190 billion in payroll tax receipts was diverted to general fund use, paying for everything from Iraq to the salaries of park rangers.

As of 2007, a total of $2.25 trillion of payroll tax money paid into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds had been diverted to general fund use and replaced with government IOUs. In effect, the trust funds are an illusion. Payroll taxes and income taxes go into the same pool of money and are withdrawn from that same pool of money to fund government.

And for that reason, the claim that 50 percent, or even 38 percent, of Americans pay no income tax is flat out wrong.

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/bookman/entries/2008/10/07/the_half_of_americans_pay_no_i.html