Damn. I'd like to move up to that tax bracket.

From the Bushs' 2005 tax return:

gross income . . . $ 738,880
taxes paid . . . . . . . 187,768

That's an effective tax rate of about 25%, which seems fair. The rich ought to pay higher taxes than you and me. The rich ought to pay more than I do, at any rate.

From the Cheneys' 2005 tax return:

gross income . . . $ 8,824,762
taxes paid . . . . . . . . . 529,636

That's an effective tax rate of 6%.

Hunh?! My effective tax rate was almost twice that. Time to bring back those old tax brackets. I'm thinking the years 1936-1941 look good. An 80% marginal tax rate on anything over $5 million would transfer another $3-ish million from the Cheney coffers to the Federal coffers.


Bonus question: Did you notice who checked the yes-I-want-$3-of-my-money-to-go-to-the-Presidential-Election-Campaign-fund boxes?