# Make the rich pay their fair share!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/1011019>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [December 1, 2024, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/1011019 "2024-12-01T15:38:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 109

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**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2024, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/make-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/1011019/109 "2024-12-03T01:19:20Z")

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> [@Bullitt](#):
>
> ■ “The top 1% of income-tax filers provided 40.4% of the revenue in 2022, according to recently released IRS data.
> 
> ■ “The top 10% of filers carried 72% of the tax burden.”
> 
> Read those numbers again: **for those in the top 1%, they paid 40% of all federal income taxes collected. And for those in the top 10%, they paid 72%.**

That article leaves out a lot of data points. Luckily, [their source is easy enough to find](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2025/), and it has some additional data that lets us dig a bit.

Here’s the underlying data:

| Percentile Group | Top 1% | Top 5% | Top 10% | Top 25% | Top 50% | Bottom 50% |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Avg Income $ | 2,152,254 | 734,573 | 473,572 | 268,178 | 169,874 | 21,979 |
| Avg Tax $ | 561,523 | 169,466 | 99,971 | 48,433 | 26,959 | 822 |
| Tax % | 26.09 | 23.07 | 21.11 | 18.06 | 15.87 | 3.74 |
| Tax Bracket %\* | 37.00 | 37.00 | 35.00 | 24.00 | 22.00 | 12.00 |

\* - Using 2022 tax brackets as a married filer (source data was also 2022)

If anything, I’d argue that $561,523 in federal taxes on an income of $2,152,254 is too low.

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