I think taxes should be based on a 5-year rolling average, to ease the burden for people who have high income only once in their life. Winning the lottery or patenting an invention that makes you rich is the American dream. Let’s tax high earners but show some lenience for folks who have a once in a lifetime windfall.
I for one am looking forward to those people that get lucky once having much higher tax rates for years afterwards, instead of just paying once up front. There’s no way that’ll have negative consequences and leave people with hard feelings about the whole thing.
If you have a lower tax rate on a million and a higher tax rate on years where you earn, say $20,000 you keep a lot more than if you have a higher tax rate on the million and lower on the years you earn $20,000
And people with sudden windfalls of cash, like from winning the lottery, are famously good at math and make wonderful financial decisions.