The Distribution of Federal Taxes Paid

Politico has a good article summarizing the difficulties of passing tax cuts a middle-class friendly policy:

[Republicans] are confronting a tax system where the tax burden is increasingly bunched up at the top of the income spectrum, thanks to huge earnings gains by the rich and the fact that the U.S. has one of the most progressive income tax systems in the world.

The top 0.1 percent of earners projected to pay more to the IRS than the bottom 80 percent combined. This year, official government data show, the top 20 percent will pay 95 percent of all income taxes.

The government data cited is from the Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis.  A more detailed look is graphed below.



The Treasury's figures also show that average tax burdens do indeed increase with income.