http://blogs.forbes.com/janetnovack/...elmsley-proud/
snip
Martin A. Sullivan, an economist and columnist for Tax
Notes, has found a new reason to invoke Helmsley’s “little
people” remark. In an analysis of the 20 highest income zip
codes in the nation for 2007 (as reported by the Internal
Revenue Service), he finds that the 130 individual tax
returns filed from the Helmsley Building in Manhattan showed
an average adjusted gross income of $1.17 million and an
effective federal tax rate of just 14%. That, Sullivan
observes in a blog post here, is a lot lower tax rate than
the Helmsley building janitors likely paid, when Social
Security and Medicare payroll tax rates are figured in.

The rich folks’ low tax rate shouldn’t come as too big a
surprise. As I pointed out here, because of the historically
low 15% rate on long term capital gains (compared to a top
tax rate of 35% for ordinary income, like salary) the 400
highest income Americans now pay a lower effective federal
income tax rate than the merely well paid. In 2007, the 400
derived two thirds of their average adjusted gross income of
$345 million from capital gains and paid an average
effective rate of just 16.6%.
snip


-- Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).