Yes, it's true that the top 25% earners pay more than 80% of the income tax burden. Check out these links (data comes from the IRS and the Congressional Budget Office): 1) http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6 2) http://www.atr.org/content/pdf/2008/August/081408ot-federalincometaxandwhattheypay.pdf What's really surprising to me is that the bottom 40% of earners get a net tax CREDIT. (See page 3 of the pdf in link 2, above) That's nearly half of the earners in the country not only paying no taxes, but actually getting money given to them. So, we have less than 60% of the earners paying all the taxes, plus some take-home pay for the other 40%. Of that 60% that pay the taxes, the top 25% earners pay 80-85% of the total tax burden, and the remaining 35% of earners pay the rest of the tax burden (15-20%).