Posted on 01/19/2019 5:35:11 AM PST by reaganaut1
It wasn’t that long ago, in 1980, that America had a top income-tax rate of 70% for individuals, nearly double the current top rate of 37%.
And it wasn’t unusual. From 1940 through 1980 the top rate for the highest earners never dipped below 70%. During most of the 1950s, when the U.S. economy dominated the world, the top rate was 91%. It kicked in at $400,000 of taxable income, or roughly $3.7 million in today’s dollars.
This history is relevant given New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent call for higher tax rates on what she called the “tippy-tops” to raise more revenue. She suggested that a top rate of 70% could take effect at the $10 millionth dollar of income.
But make no mistake: Many top earners during the high-rate era, such as politicians Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, entertainer Jack Benny and librettist Alan Jay Lerner, didn’t pay the top rates. In 1952, for example, when the top rate was 92%, the highest-earning 1% of taxpayers had an average rate of 32%, according to Elliot Brownlee, a tax historian and emeritus professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“When top tax rates were high, there was always a large gap between the stated rates and what the highest earners actually paid as a percentage of their income,” says Joel Slemrod, an economics professor at the University of Michigan.
Of course, a filer’s average tax rate is lower than his top rate because the U.S. system is progressive, taxing higher income at higher rates. Still, the income tax due on $1 million of wages in 1952 would have been about $870,000, according to Jay Starkman, a certified public accountant in Atlanta who researches tax history.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Nazi Germany required you to pay next year's taxes in full before they would allow you to emigrate.
Communist countries put up walls and/or shoot anyone attempting to flee. (Which is why we'll get a wall, either we'll build it to keep us safe, or the AOCs of the world will build one to keep us in!)
In the World Marxist Dream, there's no place on earth better to run to escape world misery.
This is how the galaxy will be colonized...
Thanks!
Same for the lefty hypocrite (redundant) Bruce Springsteen. He gets a massive break on his property taxes in NJ, because he owns bees or is considered a farm.
The uber wealthy don’t have income like most people do. They don’t work at jobs. They live off of investments, etc. That is why Warren Buffett can pretend to be concerned when he says he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary. If they started taxing wealth you would hear the rich liberals squeal.
See post # 31, it would be VERY difficult for the few surviving IRS agents to do anything about a personal grudge.
Nothing is going to change until we get a handle on spending....a genuine balanced budget amendment is the only way to go.!!!!
If the gov wasn’t so wasteful with our tax dollars; raising taxes would never be considered except by the left who loves to raise taxes every chance they get. It’s in their corrupted/damaged DNA.
A balanced budget and a uniform flat tax should go hand-in-hand.
The government wants more money? Make it possible for the citizens to be wealthier.
To a liberal, taxes aren’t about revenue, they are about control.
oh wait
Interesting tax plan Nully! I have a plan too...
1. Repeal the 16th Amendment (no more income tax).
2. Determine the annual Fed Gov spending total. (actually pick a maximum spending amount).
3. Divide the total among the states and territories using a percent formula (population, consumption, etc.).
4. States decide themselves how to pay.
That’s the general idea. Of course details would have to be hashed out such as emergency spending, penalty for not paying, etc. I believe this would create competition between states and force them to steer back towards Federalism.
You do know about outline, don't you. FReepers should all be hep to Outline.com. Copy and paste the url.
Money’s most important attribute is as a medium of exchange not as a store of value. There are too many forms of money which are too easily created for it to be a reliable store of value.
Spend it. By something with it. Gold an silver (specie), land, stocks, before it becomes worth less.
If you transferred all the money from the rich to the poor, the money would all wind up back in the hands of the rich within a year.
The Bolsheviks solved that little problem, they just shot the rich.
LOL! Yea! I don’t know how that happened!!
“All FReepres are welcome! Let me know if you are looking for property, my wife is an HONEST and hard working RE Broker/Owner.
Montana loves FReepers!”
Moving to Montana soon
Gonna be a dental floss tycoon!!
If it weren’t so darn cold it would be a great place!!
Brrrrrrr, I’m staying in Texas!!
Jeannette Rankin.
Oy’m blaming the blood super moon, Oy yam...
Interesting!
From the AOC perspective, the question is why some people should be allowed to keep more of the “peoples money” than other people.
“How’s your state doing?”
Illinois....it can’t suck too much. But that is a function of the big city and it’s metro area. I’m far exurban and enveloped in a blue county but just a stone’s throw from a normal red county line. Terrible to know that a majority of your neighbors are filthy communist/democrat voters. But as good a state as Montana may be, it still re-elected a Schumer/Pelosi supporting rat whose party would disarm y’all in a heartbeat if they could. Go figure.
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