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Three things the chart doesn’t show. First, this is federal income tax only. Add Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes — which hit wages from dollar one and cap out at higher incomes — and the top 1%’s share of all federal taxes falls to roughly 25%. For a lot of working households, payroll is the bigger federal hit.
Second, the “top 1% share doubled since 1980” line needs a partner statistic: their share of income roughly doubled too, from around 8% to over 20%. A bigger slice of the taxes reflects, in large part, a bigger slice of the income.
Third, the “rates were cut in half” framing compares apples to oranges. The 1980 top rate of 70% was a marginal rate almost nobody actually paid — the tax code was riddled with shelters and deductions that today no longer exist. The average effective rate on the top 1% in 2023 is 26.3%. In 1980 it was around 23%. Not doubled. Not halved. Roughly stable.
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