[logfromblammo]

Removing the higher-taxed brackets, and the slow creep of inflation, which has pushed lower-earners into higher brackets, and made more people subject to AMT, has made income tax less progressive over time. The introduction and removal of tax-advantaged loopholes, that are only exploitable above a certain level of income, has made the progressiveness of the tax more volatile and harder to assess.

Focusing on how much the wealthy pay, as a proportion of all taxes paid, is rolling up the progressiveness of the tax code with the income inequalities that already exist. Why do you rob banks? That's where the money is. Why do you tax the rich? They're the ones who can afford to pay.

I really don't see why income tax can't be defined as a polynomial equation in a single variable (for gross income) and an additional constant, equal to median income for the previous year. With a floor function to obviate negative taxes.

The tax can be zero up to the median income, ramp up quickly to an inflection point at about 30% for the dollar at 3x median income, then increase at a decreasing rate to asymptotically approach 100% for infinite income. For the purposes of argument, I'll say that the dollar at 100000x median income would be taxed at 90%.

As long as it's a continuous and increasing function--after the first "median income" amount of one's income--every additional dollar of gross income is still a positive amount of additional net income. Only the winners pay. It's always worth something to increase your gross income. It could also be a viable strategy to reduce your own taxes by spending a lesser amount on increasing median income--i.e. pay your below-median workers more money.