The average effective income tax rate for the top 400 earners in the U.S. (as reported on their taxes) was about 18%. It was about 30% during the Clinton years. According to Wikipedia, a person earning about $50,000, no itemized deductions, has an effective tax rate of 18%. This is supposed to be a progressive taxation system (and this doesn’t even consider the payroll tax effect, which raises effective tax rates for lower incomes). I’d have to guess that a lot of this is dividend tax related, since most of us have little in terms of dividend income.

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