So far, we've focused on federal tax rates. But there are also state and local taxes. And they tend to be much more regressive. And Catherine Rampell points out that the good folks at Citizens for Tax Justice have tallied up the burdens and produced this nice table:
Which allowed me, in turn, to produce this graph showing the relative progressivity and regressivity of the two tax burdens. 
Federal taxes go up as you get richer. State and local taxes go down. That's not a surprise. State and local taxes, among other things, tend to be focused on sales taxes, and folks with less money spend a greater percentage of their income.The upshot of all this is that when you take state and local taxes into account, the "share" of total taxes matches the "share" of total income pretty closely. The CTJ people have a graph on this:
That's rather different than the distribution you get when you're only looking at federal taxes. If you indeed instituted the calls to flatten out the federal tax distribution, the influence of state and local taxes would leave you with an incredibly regressive tax structure, not a slightly less progressive tax structure. Which is something to keep in mind next time you read a Wall Street Journal columnist attacking the soak-the-rich qualities of the federal income tax system.
Which allowed me, in turn, to produce this graph showing the relative progressivity and regressivity of the two tax burdens. Federal taxes go up as you get richer. State and local taxes go down. That's not a surprise. State and local taxes, among other things, tend to be focused on sales taxes, and folks with less money spend a greater percentage of their income.The upshot of all this is that when you take state and local taxes into account, the "share" of total taxes matches the "share" of total income pretty closely. The CTJ people have a graph on this:
That's rather different than the distribution you get when you're only looking at federal taxes. If you indeed instituted the calls to flatten out the federal tax distribution, the influence of state and local taxes would leave you with an incredibly regressive tax structure, not a slightly less progressive tax structure. Which is something to keep in mind next time you read a Wall Street Journal columnist attacking the soak-the-rich qualities of the federal income tax system. 
