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The top US tax bracket is 37% and top California bracket is 13.3% for a total marginal rate of of 50.3%. If you're self-employed or a contractor you'll have the

The top US tax bracket is 37% and top California bracket is 13.3% for a total marginal rate of of 50.3%. If you're self-employed or a contractor you'll have the employer side too so I could see that hitting 55%. And that's just income tax; property and sales tax could easy push higher than that. A poor person isn't paying that rate, but a wealthy person may well

chickenpotpie 5y ago
50.7% for income over $518,400. The effective income tax rate for everyone but billionaires is far below that.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  There are three orders of magnitude between the number you quoted and one billion. Also note that at the billionaire scale, there are cost effective ways to avoid taxes such that one’s effective rate is less than that of a typical hundred-thousandaire.
pessimizer 5y ago
Having your entire income taxed at the top marginal tax rate is like running a marathon with no legs.
dlp211 5y ago
1. Marginal tax rate. Effective is much lower. For example, I am in the 24% marginal bracket(almost in the 32% bracket, but my effective tax rate is below 15%. 2. FICA-SS makes up the majority of FICA tax and caps out at ~$140k which means that it has diminishing effective tax rate beyond that amount. Though Medicare does go from 1.45 up to 2.something at some amount of income. 3. Tax rates generally don't stack the way that you made them. ie: You can't just add tax rates together. 4. Sales and Property taxes are consumption taxes and are choices. You can play all these games about taxes, but when you actually do the tax math, it's never as much as people think it is. That's not to say taxes aren't high in California: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#vDUUVI1aSe https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#vDUUV..., but being single and earning $1MM gets you to like a 47% effective tax rate. Even with a large property tax bill and sales tax, you aren't getting to 55%.

chickenpotpie 5y ago

50.7% for income over $518,400. The effective income tax rate for everyone but billionaires is far below that.

kevinventullo 5y ago
There are three orders of magnitude between the number you quoted and one billion. Also note that at the billionaire scale, there are cost effective ways to avoid taxes such that one’s effective rate is less than that of a typical hundred-thousandaire.

pessimizer 5y ago

Having your entire income taxed at the top marginal tax rate is like running a marathon with no legs.

dlp211 5y ago

1. Marginal tax rate. Effective is much lower. For example, I am in the 24% marginal bracket(almost in the 32% bracket, but my effective tax rate is below 15%. 2. FICA-SS makes up the majority of FICA tax and caps out at ~$140k which means that it has diminishing effective tax rate beyond that amount. Though Medicare does go from 1.45 up to 2.something at some amount of income. 3. Tax rates generally don't stack the way that you made them. ie: You can't just add tax rates together. 4. Sales and Property taxes are consumption taxes and are choices. You can play all these games about taxes, but when you actually do the tax math, it's never as much as people think it is. That's not to say taxes aren't high in California: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#vDUUVI1aSe https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#vDUUV..., but being single and earning $1MM gets you to like a 47% effective tax rate. Even with a large property tax bill and sales tax, you aren't getting to 55%.