The numbers you cited sounded kind of high, but I hadn't looked at this in a while so I went to verify them. I filled out the 1040ez and the 540ez2 and checked

The numbers you cited sounded kind of high, but I hadn't looked at this in a while so I went to verify them. I filled out the 1040ez and the 540ez2 and checked the FICA and SDI rates from the 2008 tables. I found that, for a single person living in CA and earning $30k before taxes, that the total taxes as a fraction of total income (not marginal rates but total rates) are 9.2% fed income, 2.2% state income, 7.65% combined medicare and socsec, and 1.1% ca sdi. The socsec and medicare are matched by the employer, so maybe you want to double that figure assuming that it comes out of effective wages. That gives a total of 27.8%. Sales tax runs around 8.5% but doesn't apply to rent, food, healthcare - arguably all of the non-discretionary items in a poor person's budget, so add another 2% and and the worst case $30k earner with no deductions is going to pay 30% give or take a bit. At the rich end I guess it's harder to say, but in my one an only year of 7 figure income I paid 29% of total income in taxes. It might be worth noting that, of the 30% paid by the 30k earner, 16.5% goes to services that directly benefit that individual and 13.5% go to the common good. In my 7 figure year less than 1% went to services that benefited me directly and 28% went to the common good.