For those claiming the top .1% pay lower taxes than the 1% can you please provide a link to any reliable study showing that this is the case? Please table the anecdotes for threads where critical inspection will not be applied. Remember to include ALL taxes and not the cherry-picked ones that favor your 1% taking over the world narrative.
With respect to 1% vs. 0.1% - I'm not finding anything specific to that as people seem to focus on the 1% as a group, though the IRS raw data is surely out there for someone to parse. This article is a bit old, but does show average effective tax rate for very high income households (2009 data):
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/romneys-tax-returns-and-effective-tax-rates-rich Spoiler alert: It goes up for a while, then dips well into the 1% range (~$2 mil +).
This article seems to cover a lot of the thinking behind "rich paying less in taxes" rhetoric:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2014/06/25/92656/how-the-government-subsidizes-wealth-inequality/They call out two main things (1) Capital gains and dividends taxed at lower rates (2) "Step-up in basis" for inherited wealth (quotes from both sections below)
Capital gains and dividends are taxed at lower rates than other sources of income. Labor income, such as wages and salaries, is taxed at rates of up to 39.6 percent and also subject to payroll taxes. Capital gains and dividends, which are investment income, are taxed at a top rate of 23.8 percent, which includes the 3.8 percent surtax on investment income imposed by the Affordable Care Act, or ACA.
Piketty warns of “patrimonial capitalism,” in which inheritances drive economic outcomes more than talent or hard work. A provision of the tax code known as “step-up in basis” is a direct subsidy for inherited wealth.
When an asset is sold, the capital gain is the sales price minus the seller’s basis in the asset, with the basis usually equaling the price that the seller originally paid. For inherited property, however, the basis is generally the fair market value of the asset on the date the previous owner of the asset died. Calculating an heir’s basis in an asset using its more recent value when the previous owner died, instead of its original cost, is called a step-up in basis.
Beyond these two points, there are quite a few messy loopholes and tax shelters people will use to pay lower rates. These loopholes and such are trickier to talk about as a group (and I am by no means a tax expert), so I won't/can't go into that.
If we look at capital gains & dividends taxation by itself, you could easily see how the more investments/wealth you have as a high earner, the lower tax rate you would expect to have, to the point where your tax rate hovers around the capital gains tax rate, as your actual earned income might be measly in comparison.
e.g. (assuming taxable deductions are the same for both and already taken out of income):
Family 1: $400k income + $1M capital gains
Family 1 Taxes: $107,413 on income + $150,000 on capital gains = $257,413 (~18.39%)
Family 2: $400K income
Family 2 Taxes: $107,413 on income (~26.85%)
Family 1 has a much lower effective tax rate than Family 2, as they're in the 35% bracket, but the $1M in capital gains is taxed at 15% (not even at the highest possible 20%, as the income is not high enough).
Very related: Buffet Rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule