Actually, it did say 3% of taxpayers fell into the $200K+ category. Read it again.
That doesn't sound like your real question, however. Sounds like you want to know what percentage of income belonged to that group. In other words, was the tax they paid proportionate to their share of all income ? The answer is "No."
The stats for 2005 are not yet available, but for 2003, they are here in the top table:
http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/03in35tr.xls
If you add up all the income for those in the brackets above $200K, they earned 27% of all income.
If you add up all the income taxes paid for these same lines, it is 39% of all income taxes.
Put another way, their average income tax bill was $310B(tax) / $1,150B(income) = 26% of their income -- while the average tax rate for all brackets below $200K was $470B / $3,050B = 15%.
It is actually even more skewed than that because this is just "taxable income" which might be after deductions, and deductions are phased out or proportionally nil for higher incomes. A $10K standard deduction would leave a couple earning $50K with only $40K = 80% of their gross income as taxable income. For a couple making $500K, a $10K deduction would leave 98% of their gross income as taxable.
Adding standard deductions back in to estimate Gross would increase the Gross income for the under $200K crowd to $4,030B and lower their effective average income tax rate to 12%. The effect on the Gross for the over $200K crowd would be to add $60B -- assuming they had $25K deductions rather than $10K standard deduction -- which would make their effective tax rate 25%.
So it looks like in 2003, the $200K+ crowd paid income taxes at twice the rate that the under $200K crowd did.
Thank you. That is what I wanted to know. With this information I feel pretty solid in my argument. It is never wise to argue with my relatives, without as much information as possible.