What we're talking about here is Ocasio-Cortez's suggestion for a 70% marginal tax rate on income over $10M, right? Because this would be a new tax bracket, it

What we're talking about here is Ocasio-Cortez's suggestion for a 70% marginal tax rate on income over $10M, right? Because this would be a new tax bracket, it would only apply to the money you earn over $10M. So first: how many doctors, lawyers, software developers, traders, small businesspeople, or etc. make over $10M in income? (You wrote "small business," but to be clear, we're not talking about business tax rates, we're talking about personal income.) In 2016, less than 20,000 IRS returns showed combined adjusted gross incomes of $10M or over. (That includes married couples pooling their income.) So for the incredibly vast majority of taxpayers, adding another tax bracket higher than the ones established now would have no effect at all. Period. Given that the top tax bracket in 2019 doesn't kick in until an AGI of $510K (or $612K for married), what are we talking about? Say, a new 50% tax bracket that starts at 5M and a 70% one that starts at 10M? How many people would truly be affected by this? Far under a million. Quite likely well under 200K. My mother had a financial adviser years ago who half-joked that his life goal was to pay personal income taxes of $1M a year. That gets at an essential truth that people who think that this tax would "hurt" people seem to miss. If I was in a position where a 70% marginal tax rate on income over $10M a year had any material effect on me whatsoever, it's not an exaggeration to say that I'd be too rich to care.