On Tax Day: Occupy MV Activists in Top Hats Ask the Hard Questions on Tax Fairness

Occupy Mountain View activists will dress as gentlemen of the highest social caliber while holding a Fair Tax educational event on Apr. 17, the last day to file taxes. The event will run at Mountain View's downtown Post Office from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Activists will don top hats and address questions about fair taxation like: Are corporations and the 1 percent–or the superrich .01 percent–paying their fair share of taxes? Do our taxes go where we want them to? And, is tax fairness and economic growth compatible?

We believe corporations are not paying their fair share.

Since 1945 the share of federal revenue paid by corporations dropped from 36 percent to 12 percent. Many corporations, like Wells Fargo, Verizon and General Electric paid nothing from 2008-10, according to ThinkProgress.

And we belive the 1 percent is not paying its fair share. The tax rate for the 1 percent dropped from 71 percent in 1960 to 34 percent now. Most of the .01 percent pay between 15 percent and NOTHING. Over half of our Federal taxes go toward military spending according to the War Tax Resistors http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm. 

Economic growth in America has been higher during years of more equitable taxation and greater investment in education and infrastructure, according to UC Berkeley Professor of Public Policy and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

We believe tax fairness is a necessary component of economic growth and well-being in California and across the country.

Statistics from the National Priorities Project, The New York Times Sunday Review, April 15th, "Wealth and Inequality in America," BusinessInsider.com, "What Wall Street Protestors are so Angry About, US Senate Income Inequity Hearings," "Wealth and Inequality in America," "Plutocrac Reborn" and Citizens for Tax Justice, "Corporate Tax Dodging in the 50 States."

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