When politicians or pundits demand to tax the rich their ‘fair share,’ they appeal to a sense of fairness that resonates emotionally but collapses under intelligent scrutiny. The U.S. has achieved, and now exceeded, a highly progressive income tax structure.

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April 15 Tax Day arrived this week, and with it a widespread reminder that transcends our otherwise polarized and tribalized politics:  We pay too much in taxes to Washington, D.C.  

This year, however, brought a surprising but welcome “Man Bites Dog” quality to the annual ritual:  Reports from the left-leaning Washington Post and Pew Research suggesting that income taxes are too high for all brackets, including “the rich.”  

According to Pew, a record number of Americans now believe they pay more than their fair share of taxes, detailing a growing frustration with the overall tax burden:  

Today, 60% of Americans say that the amount they pay in taxes “is more than their fair share” given what they get from the federal government.  That’s up from 56% in 2023 and roughly half in 2019 and 2021.  

Even more miraculously, however, The Washington Post ran a board editorial titled “America’s Income Tax Is Progressive,” adding the subheadline “The Rich Already Pay More Than Their Fair Share”:  

Supporters of progressive income taxation should be happier than they seem to be every April 15.  Despite whining from politicians and activists that the rich don’t pay their “fair share,” the United States federal income tax is extremely progressive.  

The Post’s editorial proceeds to highlight how Americans earning over $1 million earn approximately 17% of the nation’s income, but they pay 32% of the nation’s income taxes – almost twice as high.  

That disparity accords with longstanding IRS data.  

More specifically, in recent years the top 1% of income earners accounted for approximately 20% of the nation’s income, but paid approximately 40% of the nation’s income taxes.  The top 5% traditionally earn about 40% of the nation’s income, but pay 60% of all income taxes.  

In other words, over half of all income taxes collected by the federal government is extracted from the top 5%.  

Continuing down the income scales, the top 10% typically earns about half of the nation’s income, but they pay over 70% of all income taxes.  Then the top 25% accounts for 70% of the nation’s income earned, but nearly 90% of America’s income taxes.  

The top 50% of income earners account for 90% of income earned, but pay almost 97% of income taxes paid.  Meanwhile, the bottom 50% earn around 11% of the nation’s income, but approximately 3% of income taxes.  

Those aren’t rounding errors.  They’re a defining feature of our excessively progressive income tax system.  

Moreover, as the Post editorial concludes, income taxation has become more progressive over the years and decades, not less:  

In 1980, the top 1 percent of income earners paid 17 percent of federal income taxes.  In 2022, they paid 40 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.   

High earners shoulder an income tax burden far in excess of their proportion of the national income, while the bottom half of earners pay very little.  Any conversation on changing the tax code has to start with this fundamental truth, rather than the misbegotten notion that high earners get off scot-free.  Expect a lot of the 2028 presidential candidates to pretend otherwise.  

Despite that reality, the dominant political narrative from people like Bernie Sanders continues to assert that wealthier Americans somehow pay below their “fair share.”  That falsity has become so rhetorically ingrained that it was rarely rebutted.  As the Post and Pew show, however, even left-leaning voices are beginning to recognize the disconnect.  

Returning to the Pew survey, Americans across every income bracket believe that they’re overtaxed not because they’ve analyzed IRS tables.  They’re simply manifesting their lived experience, with taxes consuming a high portion of their income while government spending continues to balloon without accountability.  

Therein lies the true problem:  overspending, not under-taxation.  

In any event, when politicians or pundits demand to tax the rich their “fair share,” they appeal to a sense of fairness that resonates emotionally but collapses under intelligent scrutiny.  The U.S. has achieved, and now exceeded, a highly progressive income tax structure.  

That should prompt an overdue recalibration of the debate, because if the nation’s top earners are already shouldering a disproportionately high share of the income tax burden, then continually increasing that burden is neither fair nor sustainable.  After all, there are practical limits to how much revenue can be extracted from such a narrow slice of taxpayers while incentivizing economic growth.  

Until then, April 15 will continue to arrive not as a marker of shared civic responsibility, but an annual reminder of a tax system that too many Americans can accurately claim is stacked against them.