Example: Say I'm worth 1M credits today and my wealth tax is 10K (1%), that means my income gets another 10K added to it. Real income is 50K, + 10K so I pay tax as if I earned 60K. 40% of that works out to 24K worth of taxes.
In a bad year I'd earn maybe 10K, add that 10K (I'm still worth that 1M), and that year would pay 40% of 20K, which works out to about 8K.
Progressive tax scales can further improve the situation in years with low income.
The markets don't have much to do with this, it's a fictive income, not what you actually made.