This last point is easy to misconstrue, and conservatives have done their best to turn it into an argument that the rich are paying more taxes than ever before. That isn’t true. As a percentage of their income, they’re paying much less than they did then; the top marginal rate is today half what it was after the ’64 tax cut. But as a percentage of the Treasury’s total take, they’re paying more. The top one percent, for example, pay (very roughly) a little more than one-third of it, which is more than twice the percentage they paid back in 1964. Why has their share of the national tax bill doubled? Because their share of the national income has doubled from about 10 percent in 1964 to about 20 percent today. The more income you have, the more income tax you’re going to pay, even if the top rates (and the capital gains rate and corporate tax rates) are falling.
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