It’s one of the many things that provokes that instinctual repulsion against an increase of any kind of taxes, even if it’s just relegated to the upper income bracket.
Even liberal politicians are lazy about how they talk about taxes. President Obama kept saying he was “only going to raise income taxes on folks making more than $250,000.” What he really meant was that he was going to raise the tax rates in the tax brackets above $250,000. Many people don’t even understand what a marginal tax system is. Each part of your income is taxed at a different rate. So for a married couple filing jointly, the tax rate of 10% for the first $19,750 of taxable income is the same for EVERYONE. You only pay the next tax rate of 12% on the taxable income over $19,750 and under $80,250 and so on. You don’t pay the higher rate on the whole thing, just the part over $19,750. Even someone with $1,000,000 in taxable income pays 10% in taxes on that first $19,750.
Even my sister, who is in her 50s and clearly in the upper middle class, misunderstood this. She was investigating ways to hide or defer income so she wouldn’t go above $250,000. She was worried that if their income inched above $250,000 she would have LESS money because the new tax rate would apply to ALL their income and they would keep less money than before. When I explained marginal tax rates to her and that higher rates would only apply to the taxable income above $250,000, she seemed very skeptical and acted like she had never heard about marginal tax rates before. I also don’t know that she understood the difference between “income” and “taxable income.” Their taxable income was still going to be well below $250,000 for the foreseeable future, even if their income inched above that.