The AP is reporting nearly half of all US households will escape the Federal Income Tax this year. Noted in the article:
credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009
Even more troubling is that the upper income earners are paying an ever larger portion of the taxes:
It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.
Even though income tax filers pay no federal income tax, they may still pay payroll and medicare tax. The country can’t survive if half of the electorate has a vested interest in voting for the candidate that promises them a free pass. Notice how many times this fall the Democrats state that the Republicans will take away your health care if you vote for them.