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Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

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Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#71

Post by aidangrimshaw »

dhosek wrote: post #70
aidangrimshaw wrote: post #65

Sort of tangentially, I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org , an open source tax filing webapp https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes . Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and California is under development!

When you say “filing” does this mean it actually electronically file the return or it just is able to print out the returns for sending in by post?

It calculates the tax amounts and fills them into the IRS and state forms to be printed out

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#72

Post by calvinmorrison »

ren_engineer wrote: post #47
keehun wrote: post #12

Are all the dollar amounts in the simulated tax output at the top of the page inflation adjusted? For example, I inputted married, with no dependents with $500,000 salary and in 1977, the federal amount was $299,864 and in 2020 was $133,947. I assume these amounts can be compared without further adjusting for inflation? Tangentially, did federal taxes really come down that much?

as others stated there were a lot more loopholes the other thing people don't mention is that companies got around higher tax rates by giving benefits like company cars and other things to entice employees when giving a higher salary would be stupid due to high tax rates. This is how things like health insurance ended up getting tied to employment, always unintended consequences

I was going to bring this up! good call out

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#73

Post by Nition »

Melatonic wrote: post #23
keehun wrote: post #12

Are all the dollar amounts in the simulated tax output at the top of the page inflation adjusted? For example, I inputted married, with no dependents with $500,000 salary and in 1977, the federal amount was $299,864 and in 2020 was $133,947. I assume these amounts can be compared without further adjusting for inflation? Tangentially, did federal taxes really come down that much?

Do you mean are the brackets themselves tax adjusted or the salaries? Because lets say there is a 300-500k bracket right now - that bracket (if it even existed in the 70s) would have been much, much higher.

Agreed in principle, but I think you mean much lower?

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#74

Post by khuey »

hammock wrote: post #59
jandrewrogers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s there were massive tax deductions that don't exist today, so the actual tax incidence was much lower than what is implied by the marginal tax rates. There was a major overhaul of the tax code in the 1980s that simultaneously eliminated many of the tax deductions and offset that loss of deductions with lower the marginal tax rates. The change was approximately revenue neutral but made the tax code simpler…

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).

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#75

Post by jandrewrogers »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #56
ajmurmann wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems like this would render the website pretty useless for anything before that period, right?

It’s not useless, it’s just data which needs context. Like the claim which GP makes that the Reagan tax reform was “revenue neutral” which is dubious at best.

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.

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#77

Post by ac29 »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #6
FullyFunctional wrote: post #3

That's brilliant work, thanks! Imagine if IRS would produce something like this (open sourced) and we could file our returns like this.

The IRS can already calculate your taxes for you. In other countries you just have to confirm what the revenue department calculates as your liability and hit "submit". You have to do the calculations yourself because TurboTax et al., and accountants lobbied so taxes are complicated and must be completed by the filer (or their accountant).

> The IRS can already calculate your taxes for you

Only if 100% of your income is reported to the IRS. Small amounts (under $600) often aren't, and while you might be able to get away with not reporting it, its obviously not legal. I had some slightly unusual small sources of income the past couple of years that I had to keep records of, report, and pay taxes on.

Granted, a lot of people arent going to have much more than a W2 and maybe some interest income.

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#78

Post by themitigating »

khuey wrote: post #74
hammock wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The second deduction you mention is just tax fraud. If they didn't have stringent checks that doesn't make it a valid deduction compared to today

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#79

Post by HWR_14 »

khuey wrote: post #74
hammock wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

Re: Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present

#80

Post by HWR_14 »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #3

That's brilliant work, thanks! Imagine if IRS would produce something like this (open sourced) and we could file our returns like this.

Congress won't let the IRS do it. To avoid that, Turbo Tax and the others promised to give free filing software out. That it didn't have all the deductions (pay for that) and was filled with anti-patterns to get people to sign up was something Congress ignored.

I assume there were also some campaign contributions that changed hands.

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