Let’s check the record.
In 2025, corporations paid $497 billion in taxes to the federal government, the most ever recorded and 60% more than they paid in 2016 (before Trump’s big corporate tax “giveaway”). (See the table below.)
And what about the claim that the tax code isn’t progressive?
The Tax Foundation looked at the latest IRS data on income taxes. And what did it find? The top 1% made 21% of the income in 2023, but paid 38% of all federal income taxes. The bottom half earned 12% of all income, but their share of federal income taxes was just 3%. (See the chart below.)
What’s more, the share paid by the top 1% went up after Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, climbing to 42% in 2020 from 37% in 2016. It actually started coming down during the Biden administration.
How much more progressive does the tax code have to be before Democrats decide that it’s progressive enough? That’s one question they will never answer.
How about the idea that the super-rich pay tax rates lower than a schoolteacher?
California Rep. Sara Jacobs (net worth $76 million) said that “It’s beyond sickening that Elon Musk – the world’s first trillionaire – pays a lower effective tax rate than truck drivers, firefighters, or nurses.”
While being driven around in her chauffeured limo, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (net worth of $8 million) complained that “Loopholes have allowed Jeff Bezos to pay an effective tax rate lower than a Boston public school teacher.”
As we pointed out in this space (see, “Bernie Sanders Is Lying To You About Taxes And The Rich“), claims like that come from:
an analysis by the leftist ProPublica, which compared the taxes paid by these billionaires with their wealth, not their income.”
But as anyone who pays taxes knows, the government taxes income, not some fanciful measure of wealth.
That same ProPublica report shows that from 2014 to 2018, Buffett paid $23.7 million in taxes, against an income of $125 million. That’s a tax rate of 19%.
Jeff Bezos paid $973 million in taxes on income of $4.22 billion. That’s a 23% tax rate.
Musk’s tax rate was even higher – 30% – since he paid $455 million on income of $1.52 billion.
The Tax Foundation reports that the average income tax rate for the top 1% is 26.3%. The average tax rate for the bottom half of income earners is … less than 4%.
Are there loopholes in the tax code? You betcha, many of them added by the very people complaining about them. (Remember, it was Democrats who insisted on expanding the state and local tax deduction, a loophole that only benefits their rich friends who live in high-tax blue states.)
Then you have California Rep. Ro Khanna, who posted that “Bernie Sanders and I proposed a 5% tax on people like Musk. In one year, it could fund: – free public college & trade school -$10/day childcare – Special-needs education nationwide.”
Khanna isn‘t talking about an additional 5% income tax. He’s talking about a “wealth tax,” which would be a tax on any asset a billionaire holds, whether it’s stock and bonds, property, art, etc.
And the idea that it would fund all those projects is lunacy.
The Institute for Policy Studies calculated that the 935 billionaires in this country had a combined net worth of $8.1 trillion in 2025.
If you taxed that at 5%, you’d get $405 billion. That’s not even enough money to pay for five months’ interest on the national debt, let alone fund a grab bag of new entitlements.
And, even if it were constitutional – which it isn’t – a wealth tax would never raise that much money. If for no other reason than that the billionaires’ net worth would plunge once they all started selling stocks, bonds, property, etc., to pay their tax bills.
Democrats are entitled to complain about the rich, stoke the public’s envy, and even claim the economy is rigged (although rigging the economy is precisely what they want to do through central planning).
But Democrats are not entitled to tell lies about the nation’s tax code. And every time they do, they should be called out for it.
– Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I & I Editorial Board
The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.