This is what you get when the majority of tax revenue comes from a small tax base. For example, according to Pew Research (<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-americans-pay-most-income-taxes-but-enough-to-be-fair/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...</a>):<p>> In 2014, people with adjusted gross income, or AGI, above $250,000 paid just over half (51.6%) of all individual income taxes, though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed, according to our analysis of preliminary IRS data. Their average tax rate (total taxes paid divided by cumulative AGI) was 25.7%. By contrast, people with incomes of less than $50,000 accounted for 62.3% of all individual returns filed, but they paid just 5.7% of total taxes. Their average tax rate was 4.3%.<p>In the state of California, "New figures from the Franchise Tax Board show that the wealthiest 1% of Californians paid 50.6% of the state income tax in 2012 — up from 41.1% in 2011. It means that of nearly 15 million tax returns, about 150,000 generated more than half the revenue." (<a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-cap-taxes-20140505-column.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-cap-taxes-20140505-column...</a>)<p>It's not very healthy to collect taxes this way. As the LA Times article indicated, California's tax revenue fluctuates based on the incomes of a pretty small number of people.<p>When a small number of people provide most of the tax revenue, yet the political discourse constantly accuses them of not paying a fair share, it's not hard to see why they feel persecuted and try to hide their money.<p>It's also hard to say that they aren't paying their "fair share" when they provide more than half of the government's tax revenue. Anyone who wants them to pay more ought to provide some kind of objective way to calculate what someone's "fair share" of tax is, and that's probably impossible.