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Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

Um, you might want to look up effective tax rates. At least in the US, the highest earners pay absurdly low rates in reality. I would be delighted to pay double the rate the average billionaire does.

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don’t start a sentence with um. its arrogant. and you are wrong. just go and look up what proportion of the population pays the most tax by income band. the rates are irrelevant

I am correct and there is a great deal of public information you could read to verify this if you so choose. Here's one example showing the effective tax rate of the wealthiest American's as 8.2%[0], which is consistent with other sources I have seen. Again, I would love to pay only double that rate for my taxes.

[0]https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/09/23/...

Please show your work. The top marginal rate in the US is 35% plus state taxes of up to 12.3% (California). If you can arrange to take your income as long term capital gains or qualified, you can get the federal rate down to 20% (but you're still on the hook for state taxes).

I'm talking about rates people actually pay. The listed tax rates are fairly meaningless once individuals pass a certain amount of wealth. Effective rates increase to a point and then drop precipitously once a person has enough wealth to game the system. The richest Americans pay a rate of less than 10%.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/09/23/...

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