There are two big problems with your complaint from the start: You are comparing federal taxes with total taxes, and you compare the tax rate with the marginal tax rate. Normally you pay a low tax rate for the first dollars, a higher tax rate for the next dollars, a high tax rate for the highest dollars. You took your rate for the highest dollars of your income, Sander's federal tax rate was the average for all of his income.

Then if you read the article, one deduction was for $5,000 of unpaid expenses. Surely you can't count that reasonably as part of his income. Next there is a massive amount of deductions for taxes that he paid. The article talks about federal tax rate, and one reason it is low is because he pays even more taxes elsewhere! And one deduction is for $8,000 of charity donations. Well, that is money that is gone out of his pocket without anything to show for it. You are welcome to reduce your tax rate by making donations to charities as well.

The only thing that you could reasonably complain about is deductions for mortgage interest. But that is a deduction that everyone gets who pays mortgage interest.

Finally to answer your question: You can achieve his 13% tax rate by ignoring all taxes except federal tax, by calculating the average tax rate instead of the marginal tax rate (these two don't change what you pay, but what the numbers are in your mind), then by making huge donations to charities, buying a big house with a big mortgage, and having unpaid expenses. Obviously instead of the taxes, you have to pay the donations, the mortgage and various house related taxes, and these expenses, which is a lot more money.

Donate $8,000 to charity, save $2,240 in taxes which is about 1.5% of your tax. Ask your employer to not pay you $5,000 for valid expenses, save another one percent. Buy a big house, pay $23,000 in mortgage interest, save $6,440 taxes, almost 5 percent. Pay tons of other taxes that are deductible. And then apply the 2014 tax table, not 2017.