CNSNews.com, a subsidiary of the Media Research Center, "reports":

Middle Class--Not the Rich or the Poor--Pay Majority of Federal Taxes, Says CBO Data

Monday, June 21, 2010

By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

(CNSNews.com) - Middle-class Americans--not the rich or the poor--pay the majority of annual tax revenues taken in by the federal government, according to data released in a new Congressional Budget Office study. Households earning less than $34,300 per year, meanwhile, actually pay a negative average federal income tax rate.

Middle-class households that earned between $34,300 and $141,900 paid 50.5 percent of all federal tax revenues in 2007 (the most recent year analyzed), according to the CBO study released Thursday, and households that earned between $34,300 and $352,900 paid 66.7 percent of all federal taxes. [Emphasis added]

CNSNews is, of course, playing fast and loose with the definition of “Middle-class households” by including those households that earn up to $141,900 a year. Ninety-five percent of U.S. households make less than $141,900 a year. Ninety percent make less than $102,900. The 10 percent of American households that made at least $102,900 in 2007 paid 55 percent of federal taxes. So in order to claim that “middle-class households … paid 50.5 percent of all federal tax revenues in 2007,” CNSNews included some of the very richest Americans among its definition of “middle class.”

Why would CNSNews do that? Maybe because it's easier to argue for tax cuts for the wealthy if you call them the middle class.