This is the Howie Pentony tax edition. If you are an investor, I think the next couple of paragraphs are going to interest you.

OK, let’s take a look at something. Who is paying taxes in the United States?

Should we be raising taxes on the “rich?” What is rich? Would you think that “rich” means the top 10 percent of the population, the top 5 percent, or the top 1 percent?

Here are some numbers from the IRS. The top 1 percent of wage earners made an average of $380,354 in 2009. The top 5 percent made $159,619. Are you starting to see something here?

The top 10 percent made $113,799.

Now if you are like a lot of people in a two-income household, you may be making close to $113,799. Feel rich?

Here is what you want to see. Well, you probably don’t want to see it. The top 1 percent of wage earners in the U.S. pay 38 percent of the income taxes paid as a percentage of all wage earners.

Here is what I think is the killer: The top 5 percent of wage earners in the U.S. pay 58 percent of the taxes paid. That is incredible.

About 45 percent of the wage earners pay no federal income tax. The bottom 50 percent actually pay 2.7 percent of all the taxes paid. The top 25 percent of wage earners pay 86 percent of all the taxes paid. Read that again, you are probably one of the 25 percent.

The other way of looking at this is that 50 percent of all the wage earners like you and I are paying 97 percent of the taxes.

I don’t complain about the taxes I pay nor do most of my friends who probably qualify as some of the people who pay most of the taxes. We vote, however, not to raise our taxes anymore.

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I talked last month about how to raise revenue. I’ll tell you what I think might happen, and you’re not going to like it.

Look out for contribution limits to retirement accounts to be lowered. Think about it.

If you normally contribute $5,000 to your Individual Retirement Account, how about we just lower that to $2,500? How about your 401(k)? How about we lower that from $15,000 to $7,500.

All of a sudden, without a tax increase, the government gets the income taxes from the one-half of your money that you were putting into your retirement account and it wasn’t getting.

I have no inside information. I’m just guessing, but it looks to me like these could be some of the targets.

Unfortunately that may also mean some cuts in future Social Security benefits. That’s just great, you say, take my deductions away from my retirement accounts and couple that with cuts in Social Security.

I also think that maybe the deduction from the mortgage of the second little home you have, and the interest from your home equity loan that you’ve been using to buy your cars will be zapped. Again, just guessing.

I have been saying this forever and I really mean it. We, as a society, are going to have to save more to expect to retire to those golden years. If not, then it’s probably not gold you’ll be getting.

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How much is enough?

I used to think saving 10 percent was a good number; I’m now at 15 percent. And that means not just in your retirement account but your personal investments also.

If you can, start saving more now and thank your Uncle Howie 20 years from now.

I think taxes or the equivalent are going up and your retirement benefits are not going with them. Your retirement benefits are going to depend more on you and less and less on the government. You know, I’m ok with that.

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The markets have been ugly recently haven’t they? You know, we’ve had a great run over the past 28 months.

Ugly is something that happens once in a while. This is a time, once again, to make sure your asset allocation is where it should be.

If, during the downturn of 2008, you were upset about losing money, but you didn’t change your asset allocation, then don’t be upset if we have another downturn.

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I told my wife I went to a tent sale at a car dealer. She asked me if I found anything to buy, and I told her the tents were all the wrong color.

She didn’t think that was funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg client portfolio manager.