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The Washington Post‘s Editorial Board makes clear that income taxation in today’s United States is highly progressive. A slice:

There were 30,382 tax filers with incomes of $10 million or more in 2023, the latest year IRS data is available. That includes all sources of income. This tiny group of people, less than 0.02 percent of all tax filers and 10,000 fewer than fit into Nationals Park, made 5.9 percent of all income — and paid 10.9 percent of all income taxes.

The 101,509,107 tax filers who made under $75,000 together made 21.9 percent of all income and paid 7.3 percent of all income taxes.

Income is unevenly spread across the population, and the income tax burden is even more skewed — toward the top.

Also writing about the high progressivity of America’s income-tax system is the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. A slice:

Yet the notion that America’s income tax is biased against the working class is a progressive fantasy. According to the official numbers from the IRS, the top 1% of income-tax filers in 2022 contributed 40.4% of the revenue. The top 10% of filers paid 72%. The top quarter contributed 87.2%.

Eric Boehm writes about a study that finds that Trump’s tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports raised the prices of consumer and household goods. Two slices:

Those tariffs have raised core goods prices by 3.1 percent, according to a new study by a trio of economists at the Federal Reserve. Those higher consumer prices were the result of retailers passing the cost of tariffs along the supply chain.

As of February 2026, the tariffs “can explain the entirety of the excess inflation in the core goods category since January 2025,” the economists concluded. “Our estimates indicate that tariff effects on prices gradually build over time, with cumulative effects seven months after implementation consistent with our theoretical measures of full dollar-for-dollar pass-through.”

…..

The new study is just the latest evidence that American consumers are basically paying the full cost of Trump’s tariffs. A paper published in February by economists from the Federal Reserve and Columbia University showed that Americans are paying 94 percent of the tariffs’ costs. Other studies from a variety of sources have found similar results. One recent paper looking at wine tariffs from Trump’s first term found that consumers actually paid the full cost of the tariff and then some, thanks to higher markups along the supply chain.

David Bier reports that, under Trump, legal immigration has been cut by more than illegal immigration.

My Mercatus Center colleague Jack Salmon discusses a new paper co-written by GMU Econ’s Vincent Geloso that exposes errors in a study that purports to show that economic freedom is bad for people’s health.

I’m eager to watch the recording, available here, of Ben Zycher’s presentation at the 16th International Conference on Climate Change.

The Cato Institute tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

Hungary tried national conservatism. The result: a lagging economy, rampant corruption, and a declining birth rate. Voters just delivered the verdict. Cato’s @johanknorberg explains what it means—and why it matters far beyond Hungary.