Look at Taxes Paid

“Bush Misleads the Average Joe on Tax Cuts” (Commentary, March 3) is not complete. Isaac Shapiro purports that under President Bush’s “economic growth” package, the top filers (a.k.a. “the rich”) would get a bigger tax cut than the majority of tax filers. This is true

If we had a flat-rate income tax system, at a very conservative 10%, a person making $1 million annually would pay $97,000 more in taxes than a person who makes $30,000 that same year. But that is not the case, because the more money one makes, the higher the tax rate too.

Heaven forbid the government let a hard-working, successful citizen keep his or her own money.

Brian Santagata

Mission Viejo