because they don't allow wealthy donors to cheat as effectively (I.E. better to have 39% taxes that I don't actually have to pay then 15% taxes that I do).
And I simply cannot find evidence that wealthy people "get away" with paying a lot less - because of this ---
We know how much any given strata of taxpayers make - say, the top 1% or top .1 %. We know their income - mostly.
We also know how much they PAY in taxes - as a whole.
Now, none of them will pay 39% because of the progressive nature of the tax brackets - your first x amount taxed at such and such a level, but numerically the higher you go, that little difference becomes insignificant.
And what you find is, while the strata as a group doesn't pay EXACTLY the taxation level - it's usually close. And predictable.
Basically - we DON'T have a whole pile of rich folks dodging taxes completely. Fact is, they're paying most of them. If the top 10% of taxpayers dodged their taxes completely, this nation would be royally screwed, because they're paying 70% of all the taxes.
Here's a nice page illustrating what I am saying - look at Table 1.
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2016-update/
And as you can see as expected - each strata designated pays a higher and higher portion of their income in taxes.
Ok - so you might think YEAH but it ain't 39% or 35 or 33. Right. But then you must account for just how many people actually FALL into those higher brackets.
See, the top 10% of filers - by AGI - the bottom of that stratum is around 133k - putting them in the 25% bracket.
Looking at THIS table :
https://taxfoundation.org/how-many-taxpayers-fall-each-income-tax-bracket/
THAT puts a lot of the top 10% in that last large bar graph.
It really only gets dicey when you're talking strictly about the REALLY REALLY rich. Like - the top 0.1%