>>The top marginal rate in 2013 (and, I think, still) is 39.6% on income over $450K for a couple or $225K for an individual. So high earners today are paying a considerably smaller portion of their income in taxes, and yet still complaining that taxes are too high.

Gotta say it: 39.6% still is quite high for personal income tax by world standards.

IMHO the biggest issue is differential tax for dividends. Even without the differential tax it's natural that the wealthy express their income as dividends so hey presto, they pay a lot less tax. When you hear of a CEO paying herself $1 salary it sounds commendable until you discover that dividends or options leave her better off and the taxman worse off than if she were paid $5M. And yet there's another caveat: in other tax jurisdictions you can "impute" tax already paid and only pay any residual. So in some jurisdictions if company pays 30% tax and then distributes the residual to somebody whose personal tax rate also is into the 30% threshold- then there's no further tax paid by the recipient.