> It's well known that despite the high marginal tax rates of the past, very few people ever paid those. Deductions abound that have since been eliminated. Rea

> It's well known that despite the high marginal tax rates of the past, very few people ever paid those. Deductions abound that have since been eliminated. Read the article again carefully, paying attention to the interactive graph, you will notice that it is discussing the change in total effective tax rate, which is why the total tax rate for the super wealthy in 1950 was 70% when the top marginal rate was 91%. Still massively higher than today's effective individual tax rates on the wealthiest. > What you should really look at is real effective tax rates by income level.[1] What you'll find is that the top 1% make 19% of all income, but pay 37% of all taxes, with an average tax rate of 27%. That's not the effective individual tax rate at all. That's burden of tax revenue by population income percentile. You appear to be mixing terms.