Fair Share

I was reading an article recently about video game streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins where his manager reported he earned nearly $10MM in 2018 streaming Fortnite. That is an astounding number to me and even more impressive is that it's largely through small contributions done millions of times by his supporters.

Then I wondered how much in taxes he pays. I did some rough math and assumed a tax rate of 38% on $9MM in earnings. That puts his federal tax burden (nevermind what he would have to pay in state tax) at nearly $3.5MM!!!

I know there is a great deal of talk surrounding "the rich" and how they don't pay their "fair share" but no one seems to ever put an amount on how much is fair. Is it fair to pay more than $3MM to Uncle Sam just to watch the useless politicians in DC waste it?

To me it's patently unfair to pay that much in taxes. Tyler worked his ass off – he averaged 11 hours of streaming per day in 2018, which doesn't take into account any other work like meetings and travel and so on – so I find it insulting that it's argued he and others like him should pay even more in taxes when they already work more than 4 months per year for free.