A single W-2 earner making $1 million has a 33.49% effective federal tax rate (OASDI, Medicare, Income) taking only the standard deductible and doing nothing else to lower their taxable income (no tax advantaged accounts, not spending enough in categories that allow itemization, etc.). A single non-W-2 earner (has to pay the employer part of payroll taxes) has an effective rate of 34.84%.
If they're married the rates are 29.62% (W-2) and 30.97% (non-W-2), under the same assumption that they do not do anything to qualify for either reduced taxable income or any kind of rebate or credit.
Most people don't make $1 million, and those that do have ways to reduce their tax burden quite a bit without much trouble.
EDIT: Small modifications to the numbers above, they were off by about 0.4% to 0.5%.
Social security is 6.2% and is capped (you only pay social security taxes on a max income of $168,600). So if your income is 168,600 you pay $10,453 in social security taxes.
And if your income is $1,000,000 you still only pay $10,453 in social security tax.
$176,100 this year, and you should also include Medicare which is 1.45% and has the same cap. That does mean a base 7.65% federal tax rate for most W-2 earners. But when you work out the math on the effective tax rates for income tax (not payroll) it takes a lot to hit 25% as your effective federal income tax rate.
Around $350,000 gets you to a 24.8% effective federal income tax rate if you're single and only take the standard deductible, $700k if married. That puts you in the top 3% and 1%, respectively, of incomes in the US these days.
But that gets reduced when you include things like tax advantaged retirement accounts, various tax credits, dependents, paying for health insurance, possibly being able to itemize (more likely at those incomes than the US median income). So really you have to be making something like $400k-500 as a single person to hit 25%, and $800k+ for a married person.
