MARK PERRY: Top 400 taxpayers paid almost as much in federal income taxes in 2010 as the entire bottom 50%. “A small group of 400 of America’s most successful earners in 2010, about the number of residents living in a typical apartment building in Washington, D.C., paid almost as much in federal income taxes as the entire bottom half of America’s 135 million tax filers, which is a population equivalent to the combined number of residents living in America’s 29 least populated states, plus the District of Columbia. What makes this disparity possible is the fact that 41% of individual income tax returns filed in 2010 had a zero or negative tax liability, according to The Tax Foundation. And a recent CBO study (featured on CD here) found that the entire bottom 60% of American households are ‘net recipient households’ and received more in government transfers than they paid in federal taxes in 2011.”