For those who are not familiar with USA revolutionary history, the Boston Tea Party was a riot against an increase in tax on imported tea imposed by the king of England without any consultation with the British North American colonies. The actual complete phrase was "No taxation without representation." The irony is, many Trump supporters are not saying anything about Trump's unilateral decision to impose tariffs, bypassing the representation Congress is supposed to provide.
Alt text: A two panel comic. Top panel has a title of 1776, and a white man is yelling angrily. The word bubble says "Pay a 3% tax on tea and paper. Screw that! Revolution!" The bottom panel has the title Now and a white man looking despondent. The word bubble says "Pay 40% of your income. Sure that's totally fine."
Not to mention it’s extremely rare for someone to have an effective combined tax burden of 40%.
I got nerdsniped by this. If you're in the US in the highest-tax state (California) filing singly with the standard deduction and all of your income was earned, you'd need to make $1,308,404 in 2025 to see an aggregate income tax rate of 40%. This would put you somewhere in the 99.9th percentile of earners.
If you instead make your money through already being rich (long term capital gains and qualified dividends), it's impossible to ever hit 40%.
I feel it’s important to further clarify that California is only a high tax state for the very high bracket earners.
Oh, for sure, it's just the highest one for this particular math problem.