You are mix and matching tax rates, you can not perform any vague comparisons that way.

You total tax burden is the sum of federal income, FICA taxes, state taxes and local taxes. Since we only have Sander's federal tax rate, we can only compare your federal tax rate against his, which is not 49% since as you stated that is the value for everything.

Also make sure that you are calculating your effective federal tax rate for the comparison and not using your martial rate. The media and politicians like to play loose and compare the two directly as it makes for better outrage. Renee that it is only the income in each bracket that is taxed at the higher rate.