FACT CHECK: Are rich taxed less than secretaries?

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are. "Warren Buffett 's secretary shouldn ' t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said as he announced his deficit-reduction plan this week. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $ 50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $ 50 million. "On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government. The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In his White House address on Monday , Obama called on Congress to increase taxes by $ 1. 5 trillion as part of a 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $ 3 trillion. He proposed that Congress overhaul the tax code and impose what he called the "Buffett rule," named for the billionaire investor. The rule says, "People making more than $ 1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay." Buffett wrote in a recent piece for The New York Times that the tax rate he paid last year was lower than that paid by any of the other 20 people in his office. "Middle-class families shouldn 't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," (Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com …