But the top federal tax bracket starts at $540k and the Social Security tax cuts out at $142k, so if you're paying one on marginal income, you're not paying the other.
37% federal + 1.45% FICA (medicare) + 0.9% medicare surtax + 10.3% NY state + 3.8% NYC = 53.4+%
but I don't work in NYC.
The top-line claim of the author is flat-out demonstrably wrong.
He also specifically says that case-by-case numbers are more complicated and vary, so it's not fair to argue that the numbers are extremely sloppy. He has made an attempt to use well-researched average numbers that appear to rely on actual rates people pay, not the theoretical marginal rates. Mentioning the marginal rates is a rhetorical device he uses, not the rate he uses to illustrate the scenarios.