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%.

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%.