Does "with" 1 billion mean they made 1 billion in income that year, or does it mean they have accumulated a billion over some longer previous period of time, me

Does "with" 1 billion mean they made 1 billion in income that year, or does it mean they have accumulated a billion over some longer previous period of time, meaning they probably conservatively(?) paid close to 500 million in taxes on making 1.5B, and now just unrelatedly, they are paying a million for whatever they did this year? Just want to understand the specifics of your example, since the 10K on 50K seems to be very close to current tax rate, so I'm assuming these aren't random hypothetical numbers. I can't make the slider go up to 1B in income here (https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#tvFxGKBdZE https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#tvFxGKBdZE), but according to that if you make 10,000,000 in SF, you'll pay $5,207,046 in taxes, so over half. Whereas, matching your statement, you'll pay 10K on 50K, so 1/5. From an income tax perspective, >50% certainly seems significantly larger than 20%. Of course, this is pure income, so its as if we're talking about an athlete, and things of course change if the capital is not income. Similarly, none of this takes into account sales tax, etc. etc. Of course, the other key question is what the taxes are for. If the purpose of the tax is to "impact their purchasing power or lifestyle", then I guess until you tax them to the point where they make 40K it will never match the 50K person? If the purpose of the tax on the other hand is to raise revenue for programs then it seems to be quite effective.