If I was in the top 1% of american wage earners I would buy my own country and declare it tax free :-p

Well spoken Hawkeye. I have to agree with the percentages you wrote as well.

Exactly you could do it with 50 mill a year aswell. Which was exactly my point.

I only want enough to live comfortably and achieve my goals. All else can go to whoever needs it. So if my government needed it in troubling times and I had all I need, then fine, but I would expect the same gratitude in return.

I'd perfer to be taxed as little as possible so i could target my money to stuff i knew was going to help honestly.

Private charities are much more efficient.

What would i be willing to pay though?

I dunno depends what "The highest" counts as. I mean... heck I couldn't see spending more then a million dollars a year... and even that would take a LOT of effort.

IF i was bill gates, I'd be half tempted to give 50% of my money for the sole purpose of paying off the national debt, not for paying for new or existing programs. But I wouldn't want to give the money until they could balance a budget for once.

Since the government is incapable of balancing a budget, I'd just give the 50% to charity. Heck, I only need $25B anyways

Thats different for every person. If "comfortable" for me is living in the lap of luxury while I have 2-3 houses in each state of the U.S. and am persoanlly funding R  & D to develop medical technologies to dramatically expand human life span, I would need 500M or more a year to even come close to achiving my goal.

50%
that way i would still be wealthy but id be paying to help the poor and to maintain the public services that i would use

about 19.5% of GDP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_Law

It's not that I hate paying taxes, it's that I hate paying taxes for the benefit of lazy people that sit on their ass all day waiting for a government handout check.