Will this meme ever die? Your data only looks at federal income tax. The is the most significant tax for high earners and it is indeed highly progressive (i.e.

Will this meme ever die? Your data only looks at federal income tax. The is the most significant tax for high earners and it is indeed highly progressive (i.e. high earners pay a disproportionately higher percentage of their income). However lower income people get hit harder by virtually all other taxes. For instance, FICA is regressive because it is flat up to roughly a 95th percentile income and the caps out so anyone making above a 95th percentile income will be paying a lower rate than anyone who makes less than that. State and local taxes also tend to be highly regressive as well because they rely heavily on sales, property and excise taxes. When you take all taxes into account, it is actually shocking close to a flat tax of 29.5% for the top 40% of earners. The top 1% pays about 0.5% percentage points less, the rest of the top 10% pays about 1 percentage points more, and the 60-80 percenters pay about 1 percentage point less. Even for the bottom 60 percent, it's not drastically lower they pay from 17.4%-25.3% [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres-why-the-47-percent-argument-is-an-abuse-of-tax-data/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/19/heres...