I understand the frustration — when you see billionaires with yachts while people struggle with groceries, it feels fundamentally unfair. But the actual tax data tells a more complete story.

According to the IRS and the Tax Foundation's analysis of federal income tax data, the top 1% of earners paid 42.3% of all federal income taxes in 2020, while earning roughly 22.2% of all adjusted gross income. That means they're paying nearly double their income share. The top 10% paid 73.7% of all income taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of earners paid just 2.3% of all federal income taxes.

The effective federal tax rate for the top 1% was 25.99% in 2020, compared to 3.11% for the bottom half. When you add state and local taxes, the top earners in states like California and New York face combined marginal rates exceeding 50%.

Now, you might point to specific billionaires who paid low rates in certain years. That's usually because capital gains are taxed when realized, not annually, and some years billionaires don't sell assets. But over time, those gains are taxed at rates up to 23.8% federally, plus state taxes.

The U.S. actually has one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. An OECD study found that the U.S. relies more heavily on top earners for tax revenue than most European countries. In fact, the top 10% in the U.S. carry a larger share of the tax burden than their counterparts in Sweden or Denmark.

The real conversation should be about spending efficiency. The federal government collected $4.4 trillion in revenue in 2023. Is the problem really that we're not collecting enough, or that we're not spending wisely? We could confiscate every dollar from every U.S. billionaire and it would fund the federal government for about 8 months.

I'm all for closing genuine loopholes and simplifying the code. But the premise that the wealthy aren't contributing is contradicted by the IRS's own numbers.