Let's look at it this this way - say you live in Texas and make $7.25 / hr. That's $7.25 * 8 hours * 260 days = $15080 / year. According to this tax calc (https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes), you still have to pay $1407 in total federal income taxes, or 9.33%.

It may not sound a lot, but remember - when you're making that little money, every dollar counts. You could be living on the edge of poverty, where you just make enough money to cover your basic needs, but never make enough to save up anything.

Compare that to someone making, let's say $60k in Texas. You're not anywhere near a six-figure salary, but you'd still make 4 times more than minimum wage.

Same calculator shows that at $60k in Texas, you'll have to pay $10778 in taxes, or %17.96. Higher percentage, but you'll probably have a lot more to save than the minimum wage person in the previous example.

The "rich" engineers making $250k will have to pay 28.23% in taxes, even more than you.

Now the wealthy, they will probably never pay more than capital gains taxes at most - which is a capped figure, most places. And as others have mentioned, there's a whole industry dedicated to bringing down the taxes for wealthy people.

So while the middle and upper-middle class is bankrolling the nation in terms of tax %, I think it's important to remember that these things have to be seen in context. I have a 3-4 times higher tax rate than "poor people", but I make more than enough money to everything I need, post-taxes.

I live in slovenia.

A basic factory worker (a bit above minumum wage), earns 1200eur monthly gross, which (due to weird laws) costs the employer 1393eur (gross-gross), and the worker gets 831eur net out of that, meaning that the government takes around 40%. (the tax rate also includes pension and health insurance)

If you earn 5x times average pay (let's say you're becoming "rich"), that would make it 10k gross, costing your employer 11610eur, and you earning 5167eur net, meaning that the government takes around 55%.

Ok, similar enough,... but(!), with the same cost to your employer (11610eur), you can earn a lot more if you avoid taxes.

Lets say you start an independing contractor business in slovenia (a paper thing, you get the status) - this would make you pay a minimum of ~450eur monthly for health insurance and pension insurance (yes, this would also make you get minimal pension later, but wait for the rest of the math). Then you open a company in bosnia, where you pay ~100eur per month for bookkeeping, a mailbox, and other related costs, and then pay only 10% when you take out the profits. So your fixed monthly cost is around 600eur + 10% of the 11k of your gross gross left over, totalling to 1700eur, and earning 9900eur net, meaning that you effectively pay 15% in taxes. But that's not the worst part... if the company is registed in your girlfriends/brothers/mothers/... name, you (as a couple) still earn the same, but you're now (on paper) poor, so if you have a kid, with some paper turning, the kid will get free kindergarden and food (compared to almost 500eur monthly for two a bit above average paychecks). You might also get a government sponsored apartment to avoid high rents.

So yeah... at some point, dealing with bureaucrats in two countries goes from "not worth it" to "definitely worth it".

given that they often precisely pay less taxes than you, you can't really avoid wanting them to pay "higher" taxes - higher than the ridiculously low numbers they pay, given their army of lawyers, accountants and loopholes. So, wanting them to pay a similar percentage to you, DOES amount to them paying "higher" taxes.

  In my country, foreign (or rather, multinational) corporations  that invariably make huge profits, pay zero taxes, by doing the following:
  - they transfer 'ownership' of critical company resources,

e.g. the software WE develop, to a remote entity that is also them, typically on e.g. cayman islands. Then our local subsidiaries rent/lease OUR OWN SOFTWARE back from the cayman part, in order to serve it to our clients. Our local subsidiaries pay a silly huge leasing fee for using "its own software" - as much or more than what our clients pay for using the software services. The net result is, that our local subsidiaries always operate with a loss, no profits, which both results in no taxes having to be paid, and the "losses" being tax deductible (depending on details, both can be useful). The real net result is, that a huge profit is funnelled out of our countries, with no taxes paid for local services, wear and tear.

When your size allows you to hold the pen when writing the tax laws, tax does not apply to you.

Tax is something the wealthy and society extracts from the taxable classes. They don't extract it from the rich, it is in direct opposition to the nature of being rich - rich is something you become, by being exempt from the rules that apply to 'lesser' creatures.

And if the low-income classes do not provide taxable income, I wonder why the republicans are so hellbent from prohibiting poor people from getting abortions. It suggests to me, they DO believe poor people serve some purpose, given that they insist on creation of new poor people.

I edited my post and added the "(as in higher tax percentages)", because this is the main thing that our left-leaning parties do.

We had a really shitty government for two years now, who did only one good thing, and that was to raise the general tax deduction, making our workers get a bit more net out of their gross income, and even the unions protested, because they "cared" about te governments budgets.

Now with the government change, we expect them to scrape that (because that would mean more money for the government, and the poor (their voters) would be least affected), and the paroles they'll use go along "taxing the rich". On the other hand, as you said, if you're rich, the "progressive" tax rates make it worth it to avoid taxes by funneling money around, and we (engineers, developers, etc.) get fucked, because we earn above average (and get hit with taxes hard), but still not enough to make it worthwile to do the whole tax-avoidance (legal) thing.

Why? If you calculate it out taxing the rich can't help you. Even if it worked, it wouldn't provide a meaningful increase in government income. The "middle class" are the only ones that can be taxed to actually achieve sponsoring the government.

So while I understand the arguments for fairness, it cannot meaningfully affect my situation, and therefore it's a bit like an "there shouldn't be any homeless" type situation. Ideally, yes, I'd want the rich to pay. Practically, it's rather low on the priority list.

> I don't want higher taxes for the rich, I just want the rich to pay the same tax rate as I do in the first place.

But they don't, because of tax loopholes like these. If you want the rich to pay their fair tax, we definitely should "tax the rich". A couple of years ago, Warren Buffett pointed out that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did. Also because capital gains are taxed at a far lower rate than income.