>In practice; we currently have a very UN-progressive system. Where the very wealthy get excessive tax breaks, and pay even less than the middle and upper-middle class (who are getting fucking murdered: at least that's my experience).
That's not really true. 99.9% of the tax system is progressive[1] and the middle (14% effective tax rate on 59k annual) and upper middle (17.5% on 95k) classes pay less than the highest quintile (27% on 260k). Even the top 1% (35% on 1,570k) pays fairly reasonably, although capital gains eats into that- it would be closer to 45% if it was taxed at the same rate.
The real problem is the .1%, the people who's annual income is in the hundreds of millions. These are athletes/actors and "businessmen" who are really just investors in their own company, and they form two distinct taxpayers. The athletes/actors pay rates ranging from 20% to 35%. The ultrarich businessmen are heavily clustered around 10-20%. So heavily that both groups together paid an average rate of 16.62%[2] in 2007. That's just... incredibly insane.
I think part of the opposition to fixing this problem comes from framing it as a middle class issue. It's not even a middle class + rich issue, it's an issue for even the extremely rich. It's not an "us vs. CEOs" issue. It's "everybody vs a subset of the richest thousand people". There isn't an income level above which you are the enemy, the enemy is all of the people who skirt by paying taxes. Long term capital gains taxes are too low and ultrarich tax loopholes are abused liberally.
That's not really true. 99.9% of the tax system is progressive[1] and the middle (14% effective tax rate on 59k annual) and upper middle (17.5% on 95k) classes pay less than the highest quintile (27% on 260k). Even the top 1% (35% on 1,570k) pays fairly reasonably, although capital gains eats into that- it would be closer to 45% if it was taxed at the same rate.
The real problem is the .1%, the people who's annual income is in the hundreds of millions. These are athletes/actors and "businessmen" who are really just investors in their own company, and they form two distinct taxpayers. The athletes/actors pay rates ranging from 20% to 35%. The ultrarich businessmen are heavily clustered around 10-20%. So heavily that both groups together paid an average rate of 16.62%[2] in 2007. That's just... incredibly insane.
I think part of the opposition to fixing this problem comes from framing it as a middle class issue. It's not even a middle class + rich issue, it's an issue for even the extremely rich. It's not an "us vs. CEOs" issue. It's "everybody vs a subset of the richest thousand people". There isn't an income level above which you are the enemy, the enemy is all of the people who skirt by paying taxes. Long term capital gains taxes are too low and ultrarich tax loopholes are abused liberally.
[1]: see page 35 of this CBO report- https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
[2]: page 10 of this IRS report: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf