which is well over 40% of all taxes. Same thing happens here - the top 5% of wage earners pay over 53% of all federal income taxes*. It isn't too surprising that a lot of average Germans are in favor of additional taxes on the wealthy. From what I've read, our own 16th amendment authorizing an income tax was sold to the people as a tax solely on the weathliest Americans. Funny how that worked out, isn't it? The same thing happened with the Alternative Minimum Tax. Back in the late 1960s, someone found out that a couple hundred millionares were actually using legal tax deductions to the point where they didn't have any income tax liability. Congress passed the AMT but never got around to adjusting it for inflation. Today, a tax that was aimed solely at "the rich" is biting millions of middle income Americans in the ass.

*Source: The Internal Revenue Service: 1986 through 2001 figures (Cell D161)