For example, if you have a $1mm house, your interest on a $800k mortgage @ %2.7 APR is a ~$30k/yr interest deduction, which is in the same range as the standard deduction, representing around $15k/yr paid in less taxes. For those kinds of people, it's easier to just make $30k/yr more per year too. These people often live in states with an income tax, so they can't deduct their property tax anymore either, since it gets dwarfed by their state tax bill.
On a dollar aggregate, they of course get the most benefit from the deduction, because most middle & lower income americans don't pay a lot of taxes to get much of an aggregated benefit. But as a percentage of their own income, its not actually that much!
The tax code is complex largely to enable such seemingly subtle interactions.
However, some oddities like theft of investments such as gold or artwork and even some fines can be deductible. So sure on it’s own the mortgage tax deduction isn’t always huge, but it’s rarely the only deduction someone could take.
Charitable donations are not a tax dodge scheme for even the people who make $500k/yr, it's way too complicated and expensive to make it a vehicle to direct tax free spending. As an estate tax dodge, yes it is a thing, but again, many high income people don't have $5mm sitting around where that becomes a good idea too.
Theft is also not a reliable tax deduction, and if it was, it would be fraud! And you just lost something!!! I assure you the vast majority are not doing this.
So please, tell me what actual tax deductions you can take as a high income W2 employee that is actually significant
The 'cost' of spending $1,000,000 on a wealthy person should be measured in terms of how much utility less-wealthy recipients would get out of that money. In the same way, your example with the standard deduction also, I think, supports this critique: either standard deduction is marginal once you reach a high enough level of income, but at lower levels of income it is much, much better (and results in higher tax rebates for poor people). It's an example of a tax policy that does the reverse of the mortgage tax deduction - it becomes less proportionally beneficial at higher levels of income.
P.s. I may have misread your comment, and if we are actually in agreement I apologize!