A tax bracket is the level of tax imposed on you with regard to your taxable income in any given tax year. A tax bracket scale is broken down into progressive stages in which a certain amount of tax owed is reflected in the given bracket. The higher the amount of taxable income you earn puts you into a high tax bracket. The higher the tax bracket, the more taxes you pay. Each year in the United States, the federal income tax, standard tax deduction and personal exemptions are adjusted to compensate for inflation. As such, you may not fall into the same tax bracket in any given year that you fell into the previous year. So even if the federal income tax amount stays consistent with the previous year, you may fall into a different tax bracket in the current year.