US: Richest 1,409 taxpayers pay more tax than bottom 70 million. By Alex Tanzi.

The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent).

The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes.

The bottom 50 percent paid 3 percent. … the top 0.001%, or about 1,400 taxpayers [1,409 to be exact] … paid 3.25 percent of all income taxes. …

The average tax rates paid for the very wealthiest has fallen in recent years from a peak of 24.1 percent in 2013 to 22.9 on 2016 and was a full four percentage points below the 26.9 percent that the top one percent paid on average.

The burdens of citizenship and the rewards for shuffling assets are very uneven. When is it too much?