But not all personal income is taxed at the same rates the way your comment - "people who make tons of $ are just going to have pay a percent like everyone else, which mean they pay more dollars" - suggests. As a person's regular earnings go up and exceed certain levels, the income above those levels is taxed at higher and higher rates. There are currently 7 different laddered federal income tax brackets. The lowest federal tax rate paid on regular income is currently 10%; the highest tax rate is 37%.
However, since 2013 there's also an additional federal 3.8% income tax levied on a lot of people with higher (but far from the highest) incomes that was put in place to pay for Obamacare. This means the effective rates for income in the higher tax brackets are more than the tax tables say.
https://www.bankrate.com/taxes/tax-brackets/The highest federal individual income tax rate in US history was in 1944-51, when the tax paid on income in the top bracket (which was then anything over $200K, equivalent to $2.4 million today) was 94%. In 1952-53 it was 92%, then 91% from 1954-63. In 1964, it was dropped to 77%, then to 70% from 1965-81 - when Ronald Reagan became POTUS and the top rate was radically reduced to 50%. Now it's 37%.
Some investment income such as interest and some dividends are taxed at the same rates as regular earned income. "Qualified" dividends and capital gains are taxed at special lower rates, which benefit those who are wealthy enough to have investments that earn such dividends and which can result in capital gains when the investments are sold.
There have always been many ways for the rich in general to reduce their federal income taxes, and for rich people in particular fields with undue influence over federal tax policy such as real estate investors to dodge them entirely, as the example of Donald J. Trump shows.
But the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”) - aka the federal COVID-19 stimulus bill and relief act - that Congress passed in early 2020 increased the ability of wealthy individuals and corporations of all kinds to use charitable donations to lower or eliminate their federal tax liability by expanding the deductibility of charitable contributions to incentivize charitable giving during the pandemic.
Prior to the CARES Act, taxpayers who itemize were limited to deducting certain charitable contributions to 60% of their adjusted gross income (AGI), and corporations to 10%. But under the CARES Act, taxpayers who itemize can deduct certain charitable contributions up to 100% of their AGI - and corporations up to 25%.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act (the “CAA”), which was passed by Congress on December 27, 2020, extended the CARES Act provisions for 2021.
https://www.schwabe.com/newsroom-publications-extension-of-charitable-giving-benefits-under-the-cares-act-for-2021One of the problems with the USA's tax policy regarding charitable giving that the CARES Act made even more egregiously unfair is that qualified charities are very diverse, so all tax-deductible gifts don't benefit society to the same degree. At all. Whilst I'm all for cultural institutions, and find the history of high fashion interesting and worth preserving, to my mind it's reasonable to argue that a charitable, tax-deductible gift to the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute might be of less society-wide benefit and merit than a charitable, tax-deductible gift of the same amount to a food bank, a charity that funds research into diseases and their cures/treatments, an organization that provides support to victims of domestic violence or sex crimes, or an organization that provides academic scholarships to poor kids.
Significantly, the CARES Act that greatly benefitted rich individual taxpayers as well as corporations and establishment orgs with charitable status was voted in by members of both parties in the the US Congress with hardly any public debate. Moreover, House leaders finagled things so that the House vote was by voice only rather than being recorded as House votes customarily are.
Reforming the US income tax system so the wealthy pay their fair share requires massive changes in policy, and going up against a lot of powerful groups that have a vested interest in keeping in place the complicated kind of tax code the US has currently- such the leaders and legislators of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the USA's vast army of tax lawyers and management consultants, the accounting profession, the real estate industry, corporate America and the entire non-profit sector of the American economy, amongst others. Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than just saying, "Do the math!"