Oh, my heart bleeds for the rich people. It's one thing to complain about the gov't taking your money... it's quite another to complain about it when you've got 10 or 100 million in some tax-shelter.

Those tax shelters are the problem! I guess they're afraid they won't be able to feed their children... caviar and champagne.

That "Papa John" guy is a perfect example of what's wrong with rich people... he's worth about 400 million... and didn't want to give his employees health insurance. Can't you hear that tiny violin?
Andria
The rich pays plenty of taxes. If you look at the IRS' statistics, the top 5 percent of reported income pays well over 50 percent of the income taxes collected each year. The bottom 40 percent of reported income pays zero. As these statistics are based on tax returns that are filed, these numbers don't include people who don't work, or earn so little that they do not need to file a tax return. The liberal argument for raising taxes has always used the example that Warren Buffett supposedly pays less tax than his secretary. But their argument twists the facts to prove their point. In absolute dollars, Warren Buffet pays way more taxes than his secretary does. However, his secretary's income is made up mostly of wages, which are taxed at her marginal tax rate as ordinary income. Warren Buffett pays himself almost nothing in salary, so the vast majority of his income is from investments, and long term capital gains are taxed at a much lower tax rate. Also, I'm sure that he makes a ton of charitable contributions, so that helps to lower his effective tax rate as well. If you earn $100 million a year and donate $90 million a year, you have donated 90 percent of your money, but you still have $10 million left to spend. However, if you make $100,000 a year and you try donating 90 percent of your money, you're living in your car because you can't live on $10,000 a year.
So say you earn $100 million a year. You donate $90 million a year to charity, so only $10 million is subject to tax. That money is all long term capital gains, so you're taxed 20 percent. So you pay $2 million a year in taxes and have $8 million left to spend on your ski trips to Aspen, your summers in the Hamptons and your winters in the Bahamas. But you earned $100 million a year so that means you only paid 2 percent tax on your income.
Now say you earn $100,000 a year. You have feed, clothe, and house yourself as well as support your vaping habit, so you can't afford to donate anything. Since the US tax rates are progressive, your marginal tax rate is 28 percent (for single) and for taxable income of $100,000 the federal tax is $21,071. So after taxes, you have less than $80,000 a year to spend and your effective tax rate is 21 percent. Guess what, you pay ten times the amount of taxes that someone who earns $100 million dollars does if you look at the percentages, disregarding the fact that you only paid $21k in taxes while the millionaire paid $2 million and he actually paid almost 100 times more in taxes than you did if you look at absolute dollars.
And this also ignores the earned income credit, which is basically a cash subsidy to lower income working families with kids. Someone with 3 kids (all under 17) to support can earn $20k a year, can file a tax return, get every single dollar that they had withheld in income taxes back as a refund, and the federal government will throw in an extra $9k in additional refunds. So they are paying zero taxes, and the government gives them an extra $9k. Would that be considered a negative 48 percent tax rate?