The thing is, the top-10%-but-not-1% band gets hit the hardest with taxes. You are not living on tax-advantaged income from your investments (i.e. you are still working for your money), but you are in a fairly high tax bracket (you could be paying more than 40%, maybe even more than 50% of your income in taxes). That is the income band with the highest marginal tax rate (i.e. the tax rate per extra dollar of income).