When I was a year or two out of college, I swore I would never complain about paying income taxes. Paying more taxes would mean that I was earning more income. I wanted to pay a lot of taxes.

Oh, to be young and naïve again.

In 2022 (the most recently released IRS data) Americans filed 154 million tax returns, paying an average federal income tax of $13,600 on average reported adjusted gross income of about $96,000, resulting in an overall average tax rate for all filers of about 14 percent.

The average Tennessee taxpayer earned $86,500 in 2022, paying about $11,000 in 2022 federal income taxes, resulting in an average rate of 12.7 percent – slightly below the national average. Taxpayers in Washington DC paid the most in taxes, an average of $23,745 on $136,000 of income, for an average rate of 17.5 percent.

Mississippians paid the least amount of federal income taxes, but, well, they live in Mississippi.

While it’s popular to complain that high-income earners don’t pay their “fair share,” the numbers suggest a different story. The top 1% of all taxpayers earned 14.6% of all income in 2022, but paid 40% of the federal income taxes. Their average rate for these highest income Americans was 23.1%, compared to 3.7% for the bottom half of filers. And that 3.7% average rate for the bottom half of taxpayers is overstated, because of the way the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) classifies the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In 2022, there were 21.6 million filers (most of them parents of dependent children) who received “tax refunds” that exceeded their withholding by $64 billion. That is, these “taxpayers” effectively paid a negative tax rate, but because the OMB classifies these payments as spending, they are not included in the calculation of tax payments.

Remarkably, the $64 billion in EITC benefits exceeds the total federal income tax paid by the bottom half of filers. That is, when adjusted for tax benefits received in excess of tax payments, the bottom half of filers paid no net federal income taxes in 2022.

Discussions about taxes often prompt questions about the viability of a flat tax. I’m a huge proponent of making the tax code as simple as possible, but calculating taxable income has historically been the complicated part of preparing a tax return, not applying graduated tax rates. Having a single rate wouldn’t simplify most returns. Besides, for most people, completing their return is already fairly simple. Following the almost doubling of the standard deduction amounts in 2017, 90% of tax returns now claim the standard deduction, making the process for almost all taxpayers relatively straightforward.

David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.