Why compare 2007 to 2004?

Exxon paid 13.5-Billion in 2004, the bottom 50% of Americans paid 27.4-Billion in income taxes, over twice as much.

His assumptions on Income Taxes are also seriously flawed. He uses total tax returns and divides that by two - 132M total divided by two is 65M

I checked the link, The FIRST sentence in the FIRST paragraph regarding income tax (page 21 of the report, but clearly labeled in the table of contents), says there are 132 million returns and only 89 million are taxable returns.

So his calculation of 65 million (the bottom half of tax payers) includes 43 million people who didn’t make any money (The elderly, people on welfare, etc.) and filed non-taxable income tax forms. To compare Income Tax is to imply these people were making enough money to actually pay income tax. To not mention that is a glaring omission. He’s basically comparing the 21 million lowest paid (the bottom 25%) American workers to Exxon and AND they still paid twice as much in taxes as Exxon. A far cry from his initial statement.

He has his PhD in Economics. This is dangerously wrong and I have seen this “fact” all over the internet, that Exxon pays as much taxes as the bottom half of Americans. It’s just not true.