Are Taxes Progressive in the US? Jan 21, 2013 Every once in a
while we read an article on either how progressive or non-
progressive our tax system is in the US. We ran across this
article while browsing the Internet and the first thing that
struck me is how the word progressive is denoted in these
articles as being equal to percentage. In the article, the
author strives to indicate that the richest 1% barely pays more
tax than those in the lower income brackets since their overall
percentage of income paid to taxes is not much more than lower
income earners. They state that even though the federal income
tax structure is progressive, all of the other taxes such as
payroll taxes, excise, sales, property and other taxes are
clearly regressive (in their opinion). For example, the article
states that the lowest 20% of taxpayers pay on average about 19%
to taxes. The highest 1% only pay about 29% and the overall
average is about 28%. What the article fails to point out is the
amount of overall taxes paid by each b