<< Back to glossary. UCS-2 is a character encoding standard in which characters are represented by a fixed-length 16 bits (2 bytes). It is used as a fallback on many GSM networks when a message cannot be encoded using GSM-7 or when a language requires more than 128 characters to be rendered.
Quick Answer. Most U.S. taxpayers with a traditional salary pay 6.2 percent of each paycheck as taxes for social security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, according to the California Tax Service Station. Additional amounts may be deducted from each paycheck for federal withholding or for state fees such as unemployment insurance.
The New York Times reported on April 8, 2009, that the average American paid 20.7 percent of all her income in federal taxes. This did not include state and local taxes. The highest 20 percent of income earners paid almost 26 percent of their income in personal federal income taxes, while making almost 56 percent of all income. The top 1 percent of Americans received a full fifth of all American income while paying 28 percent of their income in federal taxes.