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Of course, ordinary Americans also are eligible for preferential tax rates on dividends and capital gains, and for most of us they remain at 15 percent. The catch is that few of us have a lot of investments in taxable accounts and therefore derive little benefit from those breaks. In 2011, the average taxpayer earning less than $500,000 received just 2 percent of his or her income from dividends and long-term capital gains. Most of that money went to people earning more than $100,000.

Most ordinary Americans, if they have investments that produce dividends and capital gains, have them in tax-deferred retirement accounts, either individual retirement accounts or 401(k) plans. When they draw out the income from those accounts, they will pay ordinary income tax rates, regardless of whether the profits came from dividends and capital gains.

If Congress ever gets serious about increasing tax revenue enough to pay for the spending bills it passes, the big tax advantage given to unearned income may have to be reduced, if not eliminated. Eliminating it would mean that the private equity executives who manage to pay very low tax rates — because they classify their salaries as capital gains — would be taxed like the rest of us. The “carried interest” issue would vanish.

This year, that tax advantage has been reduced, even if only for some of the highest-paid Americans. It is a start toward a tax policy that no longer discriminates against people who have to work for a living because they do not have dividend checks to support them.

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