Eh, my understanding is that everybody (over a certain income level of course) pays it, but some people pay more and some people pay less. Kind of like how different people get taxed different amounts for different property.

I'll have to look into this, I'm not terribly familiar with it since I have someone do my taxes for me..

I afraid then, it's hard to reason whether something is "fair" or "not fair", given the sheer compexity of the system. Which is unfortunate: when you don't immediately understand what's fair and what's not, you have to apply rules first. And rules are just like violence: If they fail, add more rules.