Is it a set percentage?The higher you are up the ladder the less you kick up,or the more?It doesn't make sense that an associate would kick up more of his money than a made guy,since he doesn't enjoy the same benefits a made guy does.
I got the impression from "The Sopranos" that everyone kicks up 10 points of their money,but i read somewhere on this site that John Gotti's captains sometimes kicked up even 80%...

And also...in "the Blue Comet" episode,Butch mentions that the NJ family has "redundant upper management" that "bleeds of half the kick".What does he mean?

The Mafia is a pyramid scheme. The street guy--whether he's made or is an associate--does all the work. There is no set percentage. It all depends on the boss's greed. As you saw in "Goodfellas," Henry, as an unmade guy, kicked a set amount--$60k--to Paulie from the Air France heist. And in "Sopranos," right after Chris got made, Paulie Walnuts, his boss, gave him a "living" and demanded $4k/week from it. In those case, I'm guessing, each Paulie kept some for himself and kicked a lesser amount upstairs to his own boss. How much less? That'd depend on his boss's greed and what each Paulie thought he could get away with. But then again, each Paulie's boss had multiple people below him kicking money upstairs to him.

I think both those examples are broadly accurate--the difference is that a made guy gets a living and has to kick back a regular percentage or amount to his boss, while the associate kicks back on individual jobs done under family auspices.

As for "Blue Comet," I think the reference was that the family had too many bosses who brought in no money by themselves but had to be paid off by the workin' stiffs. So, the estimate was that 50 percent of all the money earned by the worker-bees was bled off by the bosses. I don't know if that's a lot or a little because every boss sets his own fee.

It really varies from crew to crew, Family to Family. In the latest Gambino indictment it was alleged that the administration - D'Amico, Cefalu, Corozzo - were collecting 10% of the Family's profits. Gravano gave a pretty detailed account of how much money he turned over to Gotti, which was about 80%, but that figure never made sense to me as it is an extremely high percentage for the Boss. But even if that were the case, not all of Gotti's Captains kicked up that big of a percentage. It is well known that Gigante took little or no money off his Captains in the later years, as he was already very wealthy and didn't need the money. In fact, the Genovese Family is known for allowing it's crews to keep a bigger percentage of the money they bring andhaving to kick up less money up the ladder.

I agree with all the points already made.

Sometimes a boss has a special relationship with a captain or a soldier. Perhaps the underling did the boss a favor some years ago or just never gives the boss any trouble. He then is allowed to give a smaller amount of tribute or operate with a free hand on more things. In addition the captain or soldier may also be geographically distant or working in rackets the boss doesn't fully understand. This allows the subordinate to underestimate the amount of money he's making.

I believe this happened with Riccobene and his boss Bruno in Philadelphia and with Accetturo and his boss Corallo in New York.

In both of these instances a new boss came in, looked things over and decided the level of tribute paid was far too low. Trouble ensued.

If you're the boss I think it's a fine line between taxing people enough to let them know you're on top of things and not taking so much tribute that everyone decides things would work better if you weren't around.

In other words: Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.

Greed is King eh?