Wait, what is the fair share? My vote is 90% after 10 million.
What’s the source of the data, exactly?
Data Sources
U.S. Federal Tax Revenue (2023): ~$4.9 trillion total — Congressional Budget Office (CBO) & U.S. Treasury
Current distribution: IRS and CBO data on payroll taxes, income taxes, corporate taxes; ProPublica reporting (2021) showing billionaires’ effective federal income tax rates (often 0–3%).
“Fair Share” scenario: Assumption based on wealth tax proposals (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) and OECD models — billionaires contribute ~15% of revenue instead of ~3%.
Tools Used
Python
Matplotlib (for visualization)
Code was written in Python using matplotlib.pyplot to build stacked bar comparisons with annotations for both percentages and dollar values (trillions).
Caption / Explanation for Post
Currently, U.S. billionaires contribute only ~3% of federal tax revenue, despite holding a massive share of national wealth.
If they paid a “fair share” (around 15% of revenue), ordinary workers’ tax burden could drop significantly while raising an extra ~$735 billion annually — enough to fully fund universal childcare, free community college, or major climate initiatives.
This is straight trash… I doubt any consideration was given to “how”.
15% for billionaires is their fair share?
What is fair? How arbitrary can one be…
Op secretly wants to be a billionar
The definitions of “ordinary workers” and “middle/upper middle income” would be helpful… also which category is Cap Gains included in?
Also this data is ugly as hell
Elizabeth Warren proposed a wealth tax, which I guess this would be. It doesn’t raise nearly the revenue you are suggesting.
“Billionaires” is wealth, taxes are on income. I have no idea what these graphs are showing.
According to the IRS website 70% of all taxes come from the top tax bracket
I dont understand why Corporate taxes would be affected here. They are completely distinct from individual taxes.
A small enough number of people in the US to count on one hand control as much wealth as the rest of the country, and yet somehow their hypothetical combined “fair share” is still a tiny fraction of what the entire rest of the working public would contribute? Fuck off.
In a just, sane world, income would be capped at X amount, with 100% taxes on anything over that amount earmarked towards social programs for the people they exploited to get to the point where the state says “OK, you won capitalism. You literally have more money than millions of people would likely spend in their lifetimes. No more money for you.”
Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense.
Your graph sums up to be 100%, so the 4 categories must be disjoint categories.
There is no way middle + upper middle income is only 25% of tax revenue.
How the hell are you getting that lower class is paying something like 55% of all taxes?
Imagine what this looks like if corporations were included.
How would the state collect wealth tax? Would the owner of the asset sell it off to raise funds to pay the tax? Sell it to who? Wouldn’t these assets plummet in share value if every owner needed to sell? Or does the owner give shares to the state? What would the state do with them? Sell them? To whom? Back to the billionaires? The prices would again be depressed by all the new shares placed on the market. Perhaps they would sell shares outside the US. But then, awash in foreign currencies, converting these holdings back into US dollars would again depress the value of those currencies and tue relative value of the US dollar would shoot up. In every scenario, you’d end up with sharply rising structural inflation. Wealth tax is just money inflation with extra steps. And you’d still not be able to fund any more programs.
![[OC] What US taxes would look like if billionaires paid their fair share](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/bssv06x7eojf1-1920x1024.png)
20 comments
Or just don’t explain what a “fair share” is…
What exactly does “fair share” mean here?
Wait, what is the fair share? My vote is 90% after 10 million.
What’s the source of the data, exactly?
Data Sources
U.S. Federal Tax Revenue (2023): ~$4.9 trillion total — Congressional Budget Office (CBO) & U.S. Treasury
Current distribution: IRS and CBO data on payroll taxes, income taxes, corporate taxes; ProPublica reporting (2021) showing billionaires’ effective federal income tax rates (often 0–3%).
“Fair Share” scenario: Assumption based on wealth tax proposals (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) and OECD models — billionaires contribute ~15% of revenue instead of ~3%.
Tools Used
Python
Matplotlib (for visualization)
Code was written in Python using matplotlib.pyplot to build stacked bar comparisons with annotations for both percentages and dollar values (trillions).
Caption / Explanation for Post
Currently, U.S. billionaires contribute only ~3% of federal tax revenue, despite holding a massive share of national wealth.
If they paid a “fair share” (around 15% of revenue), ordinary workers’ tax burden could drop significantly while raising an extra ~$735 billion annually — enough to fully fund universal childcare, free community college, or major climate initiatives.
This is straight trash… I doubt any consideration was given to “how”.
15% for billionaires is their fair share?
What is fair? How arbitrary can one be…
Op secretly wants to be a billionar
The definitions of “ordinary workers” and “middle/upper middle income” would be helpful… also which category is Cap Gains included in?
Also this data is ugly as hell
Elizabeth Warren proposed a wealth tax, which I guess this would be. It doesn’t raise nearly the revenue you are suggesting.
“Billionaires” is wealth, taxes are on income. I have no idea what these graphs are showing.
According to the IRS website 70% of all taxes come from the top tax bracket
I dont understand why Corporate taxes would be affected here. They are completely distinct from individual taxes.
A small enough number of people in the US to count on one hand control as much wealth as the rest of the country, and yet somehow their hypothetical combined “fair share” is still a tiny fraction of what the entire rest of the working public would contribute? Fuck off.
In a just, sane world, income would be capped at X amount, with 100% taxes on anything over that amount earmarked towards social programs for the people they exploited to get to the point where the state says “OK, you won capitalism. You literally have more money than millions of people would likely spend in their lifetimes. No more money for you.”
Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense.
Your graph sums up to be 100%, so the 4 categories must be disjoint categories.
There is no way middle + upper middle income is only 25% of tax revenue.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/
This here lists the top 50% income pays 97% of all income taxes.
Even if you count “middle class” as only the top 25%, that’s still 89% of total.
People with lower income have lower tax rates, an standard deductible accounts for a larger portion of their total income.
What if we didn’t spend a trillion dollars a year on defense AND billionaires were forced to contribute more?
What is this data even??
[Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2025 Update](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2025/) shows that the top 1% of earners earned 22.4% of all income and paid 40.4% of all income taxes.
How the hell are you getting that lower class is paying something like 55% of all taxes?
Imagine what this looks like if corporations were included.
How would the state collect wealth tax? Would the owner of the asset sell it off to raise funds to pay the tax? Sell it to who? Wouldn’t these assets plummet in share value if every owner needed to sell? Or does the owner give shares to the state? What would the state do with them? Sell them? To whom? Back to the billionaires? The prices would again be depressed by all the new shares placed on the market. Perhaps they would sell shares outside the US. But then, awash in foreign currencies, converting these holdings back into US dollars would again depress the value of those currencies and tue relative value of the US dollar would shoot up. In every scenario, you’d end up with sharply rising structural inflation. Wealth tax is just money inflation with extra steps. And you’d still not be able to fund any more programs.
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