&gt; Won&#x27;t this push a lot of highly payed professionals into early retirement?<p>Probably not.<p>&gt; Doctors, lawyers, and managers, at the point in their careers where they are the most experienced and capable, will likely decide in meaningful numbers it is no longer worth putting in the hours if they only get to keep 27% of what they earned.<p>This rate cuts in for income over $10 million&#x2F;year. That&#x27;s on the order of 5 times the cutoff for the top 0.1%, and the top 0.1% is on the order of 150k tax payers in a nation of 300+ million people. Even if the <i>whole group</i> decided to stop doing work that would subject them to the new rate (which is different than &quot;early retirement&quot; -- more on that next), we aren&#x27;t talking about giant numbers.<p>And the way marginal taxes work, if they are okay with putting in effort as long as they are getting as good as they do under the current tax system but unwilling to do so at the new rate that would kick in at $10 million, then they wouldn&#x27;t stop working entirely, they&#x27;d just stop doing the extra work to go over $10 million a year.<p>Which probably isn&#x27;t <i>that</i> much of the work they are already doing in many cases, and, in any case, so what? It opens up more opportunities -- even if you assume <i>no one</i> is willing to do work that would only return what income over the new top marginal rate would return -- for people who are currently making less than the point at which that new top rate kicks in. So, the main effect would be the super rich having somewhat more leisure time (or making decisions less weighted by maximizing financial returns and more based on other factors, which may not always mean less total working <i>time</i>, but better working <i>conditions</i> or more enjoyable work) and everyone else having more income-earning opportunities available.<p>Not exactly the end of the world.