[ryanwaggoner]

Our top marginal rate is 39.4%, not 38. And that's only Federal income tax. Add in 3.8% Medicare and top marginal rates at the state / city level approaching 15% for some locations and top marginal income tax rate on earned income approaches 60% for some (wealthy) individuals. Not to mention sales tax, property tax, capital gains, etc.

Whether that's too high or too low is a separate discussion. But saying we're at 38% just isn't true.

[ergothus]

My bad, you are correct, 39.4% is the top marginal tax rate in the US, not 38%.

> Whether that's too high or too low is a separate discussion

Sounds fine: while exploring the numbers here (because frankly, I'm curious - tax rates are NOT a strength of mine) I'll not engage in that debate

> Add in 3.8% Medicare

Just to clarify that's the TOP rate, and that includes the employer share (which is arguably fair to include)

> top marginal rates at the state / city level approaching 15% for some locations

I'm less inclined to talk about the local taxes of extreme locations when discussing US taxes - Those would just induce people to move if too high (particularly since we're talking about people making over $400,000/year) and their new location could still be US.

So that would bring top marginal rates to 44.2%, and effective rates somewhere around 28-29% (assuming I didn't screw it up)

There is likely some minimum level of local taxes to apply there, (as well as a "reasonable minimum" to apply so we exclude rare extremely low results just like I rejected the extremely high ones) but I have no idea how to find that (1%? 3%?)