The only way to get an income tax that low is to make minimum wage and work part time.  The average American is taxed 25%.

50-60%  We need a much more progressive tax code.  I don't mean just higher taxes for all but more brackets to account for different groups of people.  Mostly just the creation of higher brackets at the 500k and 1 million mark.

Ideally, I would set it out something like this:

First $10,000 - Tax Free

Next $40,000 - 10%

Next $50,000 - 20%

Anything above - 30%

Britain's sytem is currently ridiculous.

Well if I ran a country there would be no income tax...but realistically I'd say 33.3% should be the highest tax bracket.

Maybe the first 25k you earn is tax free and it goes up gradually from there.

That's of course realistically, I'd love to see a flat tax rate for everyone (except maybe people under 30k/year or something like that)

It would have to be universal across all markets otherwise in the highest taxed markets the very rich will either move or move their funds elsewhere

I don't see why everyone has such complicated ladder systems ...

Determine what the cost is to adequately cover the essential needs in life (food clothing and shelter), and tax people equally on all money earned beyond that point. Ultimately, it would (probably) work out to being $12,000 to $18,000 tax free for an individual ($24,000 to $36,000 for a couple regardless of who earns it) and an tax rate of 20% to 25% on money earned beyond that point. You don't have tax deductions, you don't have tax credits, and you simply stop trying to promote certain lifestyle choices with your tax code. At the end of the year your tax return could be on one side of a single page of paper in a machine readable format; and the efficiency gains would be dramatic being that the IRS would (realistically) need 10% as many employees, and countless accountants hired to dissect the insane tax code would be out of business.

atleast 60% for the top 5%. they earn a third of all revenue.

This is an interesting question.  When you say what % should they pay, do you mean as a whole, or as per their income levels?  Because as a whole, it is commense sense they would be paying the majority of the taxes since they have such greater income levels.

I think realistically they should pay 75% or more of the total taxes.

What they are claimed to have to pay and what they actually pay thanks to loop wholes is an entirely different thing, though.

What about picking one kind of tax and only doing that? Why do we need so many kinds of taxes?

Then you could lay off 90% of the IRS/Inland Revenue/etc.

Considering all the small ways we are currently taxed, a 50% average income tax would probably be less than the UK pays now [given national insurance, VAT, petrol duty, import duties, capital gains, ..... ]

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/Content/GIF/toprate_historical.gif

Back in 1944-45 it was as high as 94%