It isn't true at all that the poor pay no taxes. There is no more regressive tax in the US than sales tax, paid equally by all, despite the poor having to pay the largest percent of their income in those taxes.

And this from Molly Ivens' article "The Seriously Dumb Tax Cut":

"According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, those who make over $356,000 a year, will get almost 50 percent of the benefit of eliminating the tax on dividends and 45 percent of the money from accelerating the rate cuts. The 80 percent of the households making less than $73,000 a year would get less than 10 percent of the new tax breaks...

The richest 1 percent have 18 percent of all the pretax income and they pay 36 percent of all personal income taxes. But one of the many disingenuous tricks with statistics you will see used by the Soak the Poor school is to ignore the rest of the tax burden. Most of us actually pay more in payroll taxes than we do in income taxes, but FICA taxes cut OFF at $87,000 -- you make more than that, you don't have to pay on the rest. And of course the sales tax is notoriously regressive -- rich families and poor families alike pay the same sales tax on a refrigerator, but it's a much bigger chunk of the income of the poor family.

Despite all the screaming and yelling, the progressive income tax is the fairest form of taxation ever invented (unless you want to count the wealth tax used by most European countries). When Dwight Eisenhower left office, the highest marginal tax rate was 95 percent and no one thought Ike was a communist. It's now down to 38.6 percent and due to drop to 35 percent. For 70 years, the income tax has made at least part of the total tax picture here progressive, rather than regressive. It's not only unfair to change that, it's stupid."