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Says 22% here: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-...

Certainly with the way brackets work they're only paying 22% on anything between ~40K and 72K.

13% is the "marginal" rate (i.e. the percentage that you would actually pay on 72k, after applying the various brackets)

You don't seem to understand how the progressive taxation works. In U.S. you pay 0 tax on first ~20k income, 15% on the next 35k, 22% on next 40k and so on (random numbers). The 22% is what you pay on anything above 55k in this example. But for the first 55k you pay only 20k * 0% + 35k * 15%=5250, e.g. 9.5%

Not sure how you missed the second sentence, or why you would use made up numbers in your response when I provided the brackets.

In the U.S., as a single filer, you pay 10% on your first $9,875, 12% from $9,876 to $40,125 and 22% from $40,126 to $85,525.

It does end up at 13% of $72K, assuming the $10K standard deduction. Since only the initial percentage was posted, no one would have any way of knowing if it was coming from the total calculation or anywhere else.

> no one would have any way of knowing if it was coming from the total calculation

Ah, sorry, I thought the tilde made it clear that "13%" was the approximate result of a calculation.

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