Is there a tax on the poor? The tax on income is progressive in that higher income individuals pay at a high rate than lower-income people. For example, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers earn 9.1 percent of the income, but pay 17.4 percent of all federal taxes. The top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 19 percent of the income but pay 36.9 percent of the taxes. The top 5 percent earn 33.4 percent but pay 57.1 percent, while the bottom 50 percent earn 13.4 percent but only pay 3.3 percent of federal taxes. However, the so-called “sin taxes” are regressive. To measure how taxes on tobacco and alcohol are regressive the National Center for Policy Analysis randomly sampled low-income and high-income American adults who smoke (About one-third of low-income and one-fifth of high income individuals smoke.) and recorded their annual expenditures on tobacco. Is there sufficient statistical evidence to infer that low-income smokers spend more than high-income smokers?