How are 50% of people not paying any federal taxes and how can I do that?
50% of taxpayers or 50% of all living things including children, retirees, disabled, etc?
"Tax units" aka "households". A tax unit excludes those that are dependents of other tax units, so it's basically everyone who could file a return either individually or jointly. There were an estimated 171.3 million tax units in 2015, the last major study conducted by the Tax Policy Center on the subject.
An estimated 77.5 million units, or a little over 45%, paid zero or negative FIT in 2015.
You can see all their data in one easy chart here. It is very interesting.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/tax-units-zero-or-negative-income-tax/tax-units-zero-or-negative-income-taxAccording to similar studies, the top 1% of income earners pay nearly 50% of all income tax revenue, and the top 20% of income earners pay almost 90% of all income tax revenue.
So our income tax model is extremely "progressive," meaning tax rates increase as income increases, rather than everyone just paying the same rate.
This is balanced out ever so slightly by payroll tax - aka FICA - which funds SS and MC and is a somewhat "regressive" tax, meaning the rate actually goes down at higher incomes. This is because FICA only applies to dollars earned under a certain threshold - around $120k.
Even if you factor in FIT and FICA, there are still 27% of tax units that don't owe those taxes on net.