It's not. There used to be an ‘income averaging’ tax provision for exactly this purpose - allowing you to pay taxes on average income over a specific period (I think it was 5 years). That's gone now, except for farmers and fisherman.
To me, the same concept applies to people who made nothing, or very little for many years while training for a specific professional degree. When they finally start making decent money, they are taxed as though they're wealthy, but they are in reality playing catch up for all the years they didn't make anything, or very little. For some professions this can be a decade or more. Then add in the percentage of income that has to go to paying student loans.
On the other hand, for many of the uber rich, there's no such thing as a W-2 for your weekly or monthly paycheck. You may not even show an employment income, and can shelter your investment income in specific ways if you have good accountants and tax lawyers.
And then you have the 45.3% who pay no federal income taxes at all.
The system is broken and needs simplification and fairness.
>The system is broken and needs simplification and fairness.
What it NEEDS...is SCRAPPED.
*ONLY* and until the leviathan is cut off at the knees and stuffed back into its lawful and Constitutional size/limits should We even be talking about options.
When illegal/unconstitutional ‘entitlements’ suck 90% (I could be making that up, but I’d wager it’s damn close) of the taxpayer ‘donations’, you’re really up sh!t creek already (paddle or no). We haven’t even begun to discuss the ‘unfunded liabilities’