It's because they're too poor to pay federal income taxes. How does that need reforming?
Don’t know why the issue of 47% not paying any federal taxes is so incomprehensible for some. According to United States Government statistics, the IRS & CENSUS — we know that 35% of all American households earn LESS THAN $33,000 per year. There are 114,000,000 (114 Million) households in the US; so, 35% would be 40 Million households.
US household incomes have remained stagnant for the past 40 years even as US productivity has soared. The huge wealth represented by the productivity gains have all gone to the top 2% of US households and particularly to the top half of 1%. Millions of American households have sunk into the working poor because their real wages were not going up at all, even as their cost of living was going up every year (inflation).
To compensate for employers refusing to share productivity gains with their employees by raising their wages, congress and presidents starting with Gerald Ford in the 1970’s added deductions to the tax code such as the Earned Income Credit (EIC) and Child Tax Credit and others which eliminated many working poor households federal income tax burden. It’s not coincidental that these credits phase out once your household income goes much above $36,000. If you want to scream 'class warfare' and make the argument that these tax credits for the working poor be eliminated , which would significantly increase their federal tax burden — and at-the-same-time argue that millionaires like Mitt Romney who earned $39 Million last year should continue to pay less than 15% in taxes— then you are indeed supporting class warefare against the working poor.
Among the 47% who pay no federal income tax are 7,000 households who earn more than $1,000,000 ($1 Million) per year; the media never mentions these households. The RepubliKlan politicians and <s>FOX</s> FAKE News which perpetually regurgitate the mantra that 47% pay no federal taxes are correctly, confident in the reality that their brain addled audience would not understand the few paragraphs and charts that are in this post.
