121–130 of 160 posts
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What were the biggest deductions that don’t exist today?
On the individual side, all personal interest (e.g. credit card interest) was deductible and you could claim dependents (and their corresponding deductions) without any evidence (like a child's social security number).
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While technically a better term for assets than income, we'll continue to use "wealthy". You should realize that multiple things can be wealthy. $380k is wealthy and $20M is also wealthy. $20M is wealthier than $380k. Im the US, an income of $380k is the 99th percentile. In a higher COL state of California, an income of $380k is still in the 99th percentile. And for the very high COL city of San Francisco, an income…
I think you should not be redefining what words mean to make your argument. Wealthy means to have wealth. Wealth is the abundance of financial assets. Income can become wealth if saved/invested, but it is not wealth. There are numerous definitions of middle class, with many being "not upper, not lower". Upper class is defined as those that have the most wealth (explicitly not income) and political power. $People with…
I mean sure, but anyone able to sustain that income level will quickly become wealthy unless they have ridiculously high spending levels.
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On the individual side, all personal interest (e.g. credit card interest) was deductible and you could claim dependents (and their corresponding deductions) without any evidence (like a child's social security number).
The second one isn't a deduction, it was inadequate fraud and tax evasion detection. It's like saying that the tax rates didn't matter back then because you were a child and therefore paid no tax.
If the subway costs $1 and 50% of the jump the turn-style 50% of the time the cost to ride the subway in aggregate is $0.75
Sure, if you take some asinine ideological hard line about the goodness or badness of taxation you'll probably get your panties in a knot but if you look at it from the perspective of who's spending money in the economy a little bit of broadly applied fraud and a little bit of tax reduction are the same thing because they shuffle money around in the same manner.
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Tax revenues grew monotonically across the tax reforms of the 1980s in smoothly boring fashion with no discontinuities. That is pretty much a textbook definition of "revenue neutral". Are you arguing that the tax revenue grew too quickly to be defined as "revenue neutral"? I'm not old enough to have experienced it but the data is really obvious.
Would guess the idea is more about who pays that similar revenue, as since the 80s income inequality has shot upwards.
The US personal tax code looks extremely complicated to British eyes, but British people have a similar calculator at their disposal at https://listentotaxman.com/ though it only goes back to 2000.
The thing I find interesting is Americans always claim that countries with socialised healthcare have significantly higher tax burdens, but if you compare take home salaries between say New York and London, or San Fransisco and London, they're not that far apart. That said, in tech Americans seem to make 50%-100% more total comp on a cost of living adjusted basis doing exactly the same job...
That's a generalisation, although some conservatives do make the claim. It's nonsense, of course: the most other developed countries including the UK spend around a third as much per person on healthcare. Another victim of poorly regulated market consolidation (among other factors).
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The second one isn't a deduction, it was inadequate fraud and tax evasion detection. It's like saying that the tax rates didn't matter back then because you were a child and therefore paid no tax.
Regardless, in aggregate it means the effective rate was lower. If the subway costs $1 and 50% of the jump the turn-style 50% of the time the cost to ride the subway in aggregate is $0.75 Sure, if you take some asinine ideological hard line about the goodness or badness of taxation you'll probably get your panties in a knot but if you look at it from the perspective of who's spending money in the economy a little bit…
Sometimes called “principled”
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A quick google shows that yes, there was a 70% marginal tax rate (applying to income over $108,300 - not inflation adjusted - for a single filer) as recently as 1981 https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-bracke...
But nobody ever paid it as there were millions of loopholes.
This is such a compelling narrative for the "taxes should be lower" crowd that I'm skeptical. Granted, this is my personal bias. But I would love to see the actual clear examples of how people are deducting like 50% of their income or whatever they'd need to bring their 70% marginal rate down to 35%.
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Would guess the idea is more about who pays that similar revenue, as since the 80s income inequality has shot upwards.
I mean since we are talking Federal income tax the bottom 50% basically doesn't pay that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, in aggregate it means the effective rate was lower. If the subway costs $1 and 50% of the jump the turn-style 50% of the time the cost to ride the subway in aggregate is $0.75 Sure, if you take some asinine ideological hard line about the goodness or badness of taxation you'll probably get your panties in a knot but if you look at it from the perspective of who's spending money in the economy a little bit…
> asinine ideological Sometimes called “principled”