madcap
What's worse is that Democrats insist that the middle class pays a higher tax rate than Romney because they are comparing the marginal rate of the middle class with Romney's effective rate.

I was wondering about that as well how liberals make these high tax rate declarations.

Thanks to maxing out 401ks and HSA's and itemizing charitable donations, a small amount of mortgage interest and a healthy chunk of real estate taxes, our effective tax rate is slightly under 10% on a 6 figure income.

When you live on less than 50% of your income, you can do things like max out 401k's. And we also take advantage of the over 50 contributions.

decath

Here are the effective tax rates by income category:

http://taxfoundation.org/blog/chart-day-effective-tax-rates-...

Median household income is slightly below $50,000, but for argument's sake, let's assume that "middle class" is $50,000 to $100,000. They pay only 8%.