OK let's see here, I assume that we are talking about the "individual" tax returns of the richest 400 people in the U.S. and comparing that to the average of millions of people that fall into the mythical "median" spectrum. Lets make two assumptions: 1) the median income is based on wages and 2) the 400 rich people get the vast majority of their income from non-wage sources. One big factor, right off the bat, is SS/Medicare is a 6.4% tax bump in the rate of the median income, and has little if any affect on the rich. The next factor is that the rich are not rich because they are stupid, they play the tax law game using the best available tax lawyers, tax accountants and, yes, tax law lobbyists to "tweek" both their investments and the tax code itself to maximize their gain and minimize their taxation. One very simple and legal way to do this is by switching from stock dividends (fully taxable) to growth stocks (capital gain tax rate) or gov't bonds (non-taxable). I am not sure what federal taxes are included but assume FIT, FICA and excise taxes are. The percentage of fuel, alcohol, tobacco and etc. excise taxes (if included) would also fall much heavier upon the median income folks than the rich, since personal consumption of these items is about the same amount even for the uber-rich. What would also be an interesting graph bar addition is the percentages paid by these two groups of the total of all federal taxes.