81–90 of 98 posts
A reminder that comparing old tax rates with modern ones is very hard, since there was a huge amount of deductions available for the high income earners, and hardly anyone actually paid anywhere near the nominal 91%.
It's also arithmetically impossible to pay the highest bracket given that it's a marginal tax rate.
I don't understand why we don't just not tax income below say $20k. It can't be a lot of money for the government even in aggregate, and it would make a huge difference in low income people's lives, arguably larger than any of the government programs their taxes are going to fund.
We do this in Australia (($18,200). It largely works well. The downside is people can use others tax free threshold. E.g. If someone is working and is married to housewife plus has a couple kids at uni, if they have a business or assets in trust they can distribute $20k to each person so now they have $80k effectively tax free. I'm not sure the scale of this being taken advantage off though but it's well know benifit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Posters will now stumble over each other to assure you that tax evasion was so widespread Arranging your income to reduce the tax paid in accordance with the law isn't tax evasion.
I’m pretty sure the rationale given by current politicians for at-present proposals is that they are arranging their income to avoid taxes, and therefore they aren’t paying their “fair” share. It’s nauseating but evasion (a legal term) and avoidance are taken as the same morally compromised position now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd encourage you to actually research how any of this works, because you are extremely misinformed and parroting the same lines that I see repeated verbatim around the internet by other misinformed people(ie "Bezos can just borrow against stock he owns and never pay any taxes!").
Do you have a link or can give a brief explanation? How the loans work that you say we don't understand?
A simple question would be - how does the loan ever get paid off?
A simple point would be that not paying taxes on loans is not some crazy loophole that only the rich have access to. Literally anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage for a house or a loan for a car has taken advantage of this - I'd guess at least 80% of adults in America have a car or home loan.
Ok, now do the effective rates paid. Better yet, do overall tax burden rather than just income tax. Everyone loves to get a good ideological circle jerk going over the nominal 1950s rates but the actual tax burden at (various different points on the income spectrum) paints a very, very, different picture.
Do you have this data? I'd be very interested in this picture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All right, then I'll ask the other question. What do you consider "fair"? You don't say it, and the GP doesn't, but the implicit assertion is that the rich don't pay their "fair share", presumably because in some mythological past they used to pay 94%. What is then "fair"? 94% ? Do you have a formula? At least a principle. If I make $100 MM (I don't), should I pay 50%, 60%, 70%? I mean, even if I pay 99%, I still ret…
> Do you have a formula. At least a principle. I have a formula and a principle. Anyone earning $100 MM or above should pay the same effective percentage as the median taxpayer... relative to their wealth . The median US household has a net worth of $120k and pays about $10k in taxes each year. That equates to an 8% wealth tax. If a billionaire has $1 MM in income one year, they could pay $2 MM in tax and not even no…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Posters will now stumble over each other to assure you that tax evasion was so widespread that actually the effective tax rate was lower than Reagan's wildest dreams.
All right, then I'll ask the other question. What do you consider "fair"? You don't say it, and the GP doesn't, but the implicit assertion is that the rich don't pay their "fair share", presumably because in some mythological past they used to pay 94%. What is then "fair"? 94% ? Do you have a formula? At least a principle. If I make $100 MM (I don't), should I pay 50%, 60%, 70%? I mean, even if I pay 99%, I still ret…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a link or can give a brief explanation? How the loans work that you say we don't understand?
Not really, because I have no idea the extent of ignorance I'm dealing with. A simple question would be - how does the loan ever get paid off? A simple point would be that not paying taxes on loans is not some crazy loophole that only the rich have access to. Literally anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage for a house or a loan for a car has taken advantage of this - I'd guess at least 80% of adults in America hav…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one paid that tax rate. https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ Average rate paid by the 1% back then was around 41%
Apples, meet oranges. "The data comes from a recent paper by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman that attempts to account for all federal, state, and local taxes paid by different groups of Americans over the last 100 years" But regardless, it was higher in 1950, almost 6 points higher. And look at al the caveats... 1] Some of the distributional assumptions in the Piketty, Saez, and Zucman paper are que…
Sure, but you're being quite disingenuous with your post by suggesting that tax rates were any different back then compared to now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apples, meet oranges. "The data comes from a recent paper by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman that attempts to account for all federal, state, and local taxes paid by different groups of Americans over the last 100 years" But regardless, it was higher in 1950, almost 6 points higher. And look at al the caveats... 1] Some of the distributional assumptions in the Piketty, Saez, and Zucman paper are que…
>But regardless, it was higher in 1950, almost 6 points higher. Sure, but you're being quite disingenuous with your post by suggesting that tax rates were any different back then compared to now.