>It flies in the face of what all 'economists' always say when they talk about taxes... that it is the middle class where the majority of tax money comes from so government has to be real careful when it reduces tax rates for the middle class.

Dunno - if you define "middle class" not via percentiles of population but as spread across income earned, you'll get a lot of people. These people are not only paying income tax, but also VAT, gasoline tax (at least here about 5 times more than share of the budget targeted for road building/repair), all those other little taxes and not to forget: all those forced deductions of social security, where it is clear that you will not even get the money back you had to put into it. In those areas "middle class" pays more AFAIK - the percentages Traxy wrote about are about the same for german income tax.

my 0.02 EUR

thomas