There are three types of high income people - people with income that comes from a salary, people whose income that comes from their business and income that comes from capital gains. I would venture to guess that high income salaried people out number the other two combined.Depends on what numbers you pick and how you define income. For sure the top 1% do pay a higher rate of income tax (26% vs. 20 odd % for the bottom 50%) and overall they pay more in tax, but their effective tax rate is far lower as they gain much less of their income from sources subject to income tax. Warren Buffett's total tax rate is less than 1%, which appears to be about par for the course for his peers.
Top 10% make $190k+ Salaried actual Percent paid = ~20% of the first ~180k, plus 32% of that above 180k
Top 5% make $290k + Salaried actual percentage paid = ~23% of first 231k, plus 35% of that above 231k
Top 1% makes $865+ Salaried actual percentage paid = ~30% of first 578k, plus 37% of that above 578k
This is for individuals... its different for married, and it doesn't count state taxes.
If your are a business man, with a pass through business, you can write off a lot of expenses salaried individuals pay for as a business expense before you pay your salary, thus taking a "lower salary" and paying ower income taxes, but the brackets are the same for what you do pass through.
Those individuals making the majority of their income from capital gains, they pay nothing on the first $44k, 15% on the next ~450k and 20% above that.
So a top 1% pays about 13.6% on the first $490k, and 20% on anything above that.
So, if they are reporting that income, top 1% people are going to be paying at least 16%. I'm told there are a lot of ways they can hide / shift their income to different years etc. But I wouldn't know about that - I've never made that kind of money in capital gains.