Interesting Tax Fact About Soaking the Rich

Buried in a pretty good piece about the Tax Day Tea Parties from some economists at Forbes is a little tidbit that I did not know about soaking the rich.

Here is an interesting set of facts. If the government increased the top tax rate from the current rate of 35% to 100% (yes, that's right 100%), it would only collect an extra $400 billion this year. In other words, confiscating all the income that is currently taxed at 35% would not raise enough revenue to cover any of the annual deficits projected in the next 10 years. There is no way that tax hikes on the rich alone can pay for proposed spending in the current budget.

So raising to top tax rate from 35% to 100% will only net an extra $400 billion? You can't even pay for half a bailout with that money. Plus Obama's plan calls for reducing the amount of people that actually pay taxes as well. It looks more and more likely that we will either have tax hikes for everyone or monster debt service to be looking forward to in 2010 and beyond.