For Tax Day 2026, here are some estimates of how progressive the US tax system is, drawing primarily from published academic work. While there is disagreement about exactly how progressive the tax system is (and should be), these papers all agree that as income rises, average tax rates rise. These estimates attempt to include, as best as possible, all federal, state, and local taxes, and to take account of tax incidence.
From Auten and Splinter in the Journal of Political Economy:
Piketty, Saez, and Zucman in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (Figure IX):
And here is a chart that I created, which comes from the appendix data for PSZ (2018), which is roughly comparable to the Auten-Splinter chart above. Note that it isn’t perfectly comparable: the income groups on the x-axis aren’t exactly the same, and the latest year in PSZ is 2014 rather than 2019 (they do have estimates for later years in updates to the work, but I am trying to stick with the published academic work). But they are roughly comparable:
Auerbach, Kotlikoff, and Koehler in the Journal of Political Economy take the additional step of computing lifetime average tax rates, rather than for a single year, showing the US tax system is even more progressive when considered this way. Note: they also include the value of transfers, which makes these results not directly comparable to the papers above:
Finally, here are two estimates from think tanks that work on tax policy. Even though the Tax Foundation is considered more right-leaning and ITEP is considered more left-leaning, both agree that the overall US tax code is progressive.
Economist Writing Every Day 