[lelandbatey]

So, I'm looking at the actual IRS spreadsheet of Income Tax for the year 2014, which you can find here: https://www.irs.gov/uac/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical...

The IRS is so nice as to provide exactly the metric we're looking for, which is:

For the group of people making $XXX per year or more, what percent of all income in the US does this group earn, and what percent of all income tax does this group pay?

Here's the groups you mentioned:

    +------------------+------------------------+---------------------+--------------------------+
    | Income group     | Percent of tax returns | Percent of total US | Percent of total US      |
    |                  | in this group          | taxable income      | Income Tax owed          |
    |                  |                        | earned by group     | by group (after credits) |
    +------------------+------------------------+---------------------+--------------------------+
    | $200,000 or more | 4.20%                  | 41.90%              | 57.50%                   |
    +------------------+------------------------+---------------------+--------------------------+
    | $100,000 or more | 16.00%                 | 67.90%              | 79.50%                   |
    +------------------+------------------------+---------------------+--------------------------+

So yes you can see that those who earn high amounts pay taxes at greater rates than those who earn smaller amounts. However, it's not as though those earning $250k+ a year are only earning 25% of money earned by people in the US but are paying 50% of the taxes. Instead, they're payed around 40% of all the income and pay around 57% of all the taxes.