If you're single in the US, you have to earn over $578,125 taxable dollars in a year to have a single dollar of you income taxed at the highest rate, 37%. So considering only federal taxes there is no way most of anyone's income goes to tax in the US. The highest state tax bracket in the US, a quick search tells me, is 13.3%. In California, any dollars of taxable income you earn over $1 million gets taxed at this rate. So if you earn $2 over this threshold, the majority of these two dollars, rounding up, will be taxed. If you manage to earn enough above this threshold for the extra 0.3% tax to make up for the lower tax brackets you crossed on the way to this threshold, you are a pretty rare individual indeed.