As expected from this sort of publication, it looks at income tax only, ignores regressive payroll and sales taxes.
And STILL regressive at the very top.
Democrats and Republicans are both to blame for this - two sides of the same coin. They lie, a lot.
And your chart is lying too - this particular chart is of the Democratic Lie variety.
I can tell you right now that someone making 100K / yr is not in a 12% tax bracket. How do I know that? I'm in that bracket and between SS, FICA, no state tax, around 35% of my income goes to the Gov't. FICA alone is well over 20%.
This has been discussed before but -
Basically once you hit 250K/yr houshold income you are being taxed out the wazoo. No one pays more than you do in taxes as a % of income.
What is 250k / yr? It's an engineer and a pilot. A doctor and a nurse. It is the true professional upper middle class.
Doctors btw, typically have ~200K in student loans when they begin to practice at age 35....
These people largely are not rich though. Rich people - don't need to worry about income.
From there you start getting into the folks at 500k/yr. Who makes 500k/yr?
For the most part, not professional middle class people. Maybe some small business owners. High ranking VPs and execs. Someone who is at the very top of their professional field maybe - even then, probably not, except a doctor. No one in a normal job makes that, even dual incomes.
And that is where the effective income tax rate levels off.
In other words, the Dem version of taxes is to tax the middle and upper middle class to death, but they never do anything about the super rich that they talk so much about.
This is easy to them because, to someone making 30k/yr, calling an engineer married to a nurse "wealthy" seems to connect with them. This kind of strategy is why so many get the feeling that the Dems want everyone to be burger flippers - that's the constituency they consistently appeal to.
The Republican version is to give small tax cuts to the middle and upper middle class, and big tax cuts to the super rich.
Either way, the rich win.
In other words, both parties are in the pockets of the wealthy.
Hell, they are the wealthy.