Lately, right-wing media figures have been having some fun with numbers to distort the tax burden faced by the wealthiest Americans. The emerging false narrative relies on the percentage of income taxes paid by the top 5 or 10 percent of taxpayers, a red herring diverting attention away from the simple fact that these taxpayers take home far more income.

Now one thing that is certain is that right-wingers will say anything to bring about the death of taxes. Take for example noted windbag Mark Steyn. In an April 9 Washington Times column, the frequent Rush Limbaugh stand-in yapped on and on about the unfairness of it all:

We have bigger government, bigger bureaucracy, bigger spending, bigger deficits, bigger debt and yet an ever-smaller proportion of citizens paying for it all.

The top 5 percent of taxpayers contribute 60 percent of revenue. The top 10 percent provide 75 percent. Another two-fifths make up the rest. And half are exempt. This isn't redistribution -- a “leveling” to address the “maldistribution” of income, as Sen. Max Baucus, Kleptocristan Democrat, put it the other day. It isn't even “spreading the wealth around,” as then-Sen. Barack Obama put it in an unfortunate off-the-prompter moment during the 2008 campaign. Rather, it's an assault on the moral legitimacy of the system.

Over at Fox & Friends, Stuart Varney exclaimed, “The top 10 percent of income earners pay 75 percent of all the taxes that come into the Treasury.”

What's under assault here is elementary statistical analysis.

To be clear, the top 5 percent does in fact pay more than 5 percent of federal income taxes. Much more. In large part this is on account of the fact that they get more of the income. Much more.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the top 5 percent of all taxpayers earned 30 percent of all income in 2009. The top 10 percent took home 40 percent of all income.

David Leonhardt explained the quite obvious relationship between a taxpayer's share of income and that taxpayer's share of income taxes in a New York Times column:

Over the last 30 years, rates have fallen more for the wealthy, and especially the very wealthy, than for any other group. At the same time, their incomes have soared, and the incomes of most workers have grown only moderately faster than inflation.

So a much greater share of income is now concentrated at the top of distribution, while each dollar there is taxed less than it once was.