Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

In the US, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 70% as recently as 1981. It was 92% in 1952.

Today it's 37%. So it's really the other way around — taxes have never been as low as now in recent history.

That is US federal taxes. Now go grab your check and see how much you are paying in taxes that are not called that. Then remember you also pay taxes when you buy things too. Also remember your must carry insurance (3 of those). Also in some cases just for owning something. Plus state and local. My theory is We did not really lower taxes that much. We just itemized the bill to make it look smaller.

Ok cool guy, please show your work. That should be a very easy to verify theory, you have CPI data, historical IRS tax schedules, state tax schedules, company quarterly statements, etc... Simply saying that taxes are higher than ever feeds into right-wing conspiracy theories and I'm just tired of it.

Yes, it is tiring when someone posts something with absolutely no evidence is taken at face value as truth. But when someone offers evidence to the contrary, it gets argued to death. "What are taxes?" "Insurance is a type of tax." "Sales tax counts now."

None of these people are making the same arguments to the poster who offered nothing but a claim. Because "of course it's true, everyone knows it". Well, everyone is quite capable of being wrong. As those self-same people will happily tell us when it's time to enact some very mild preventative measures for the health and safety of the country that the vast majority of health professionals recommend.

22 + 12 + 3 + 5 + 10 + 7 Those are my percentages of 'tax/insurance'. Which contains must carry insurance and called by the supreme court as a tax as argued by the DoJ. Three of them contain 'hidden' taxes or as your boss's accountant puts it, 'your total compensation'. That is about ~60% of my incoming going towards 'taxes'. That is just for me where I live and my income level. I also am leaving out some others. In some states that number is more along the lines of 70-75% of your total income. We also play games with the Laffer curve so it is harder for anyone to really know what is going on.

My argument is we itemized the bill. All of the individual items look lower. Because we broke them out. The whole number is about the same. I would argue that some are too low for our spend rate but that is a different argument.

In 1952, there were so many carveouts and exemptions that few individuals payed the actual 92%. With fastidious accounting, one's personal tax liability could be zero even if one qualified for the highest income bracket. This was the case until 1970 following Congress's invention and institution of the Alternative Minimum Tax. And while 1981 wasn't the most friendly year for low income taxes, increased globalization meant easier opportunities to set up overseas tax structures for the purpose of reducing one's overall tax burden (what's commonly referred to as tax "avoidance"). To make the claim of highest or lowest tax year for the highest income bracket between 1913 and today is impossible to make without accounting for reductions available in the given year.

It's really tricky to compare marginal rates like that. Has the definition of taxable income changed over time? How many people were actually taxed at those marginal rates? And so on.

You didn't bother to interrogate the other poster on these aspects. Why is it only tricky when looking at the evidence against the claim?

It would be tricky whatever the claim

What about tax for a median citizen?

I don’t know. It’s pretty difficult to compare when the median citizen’s circumstances have also changed so much.

But in the context of reality’s absurdity reaching escape velocity from parody, it seems fitting that the rich barely pay taxes anymore and are seeking immortality cures like Thiel does. Death and taxes are the postmodern libertarian’s greatest enemies.

Taking extremes is a strawman. What matters is what most people pay.

"Average federal tax rates for all households, by comprehensive household income quintile. 1979 to 2018" at https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-averag...

"Average Total Federal Tax Rate (percent)" is lower for every percentile from 1979 to 2018.

  Year                     1979  2018
  Lowest Quintile           9.3   0.0
  Second Quintile          15.0   8.1
  Middle Quintile          19.1  12.8
  Fourth Quintile          21.7  16.7
  Highest Quintile         27.1  24.4
  All Quintiles            22.4  19.3
  81st - 90th  Percentiles 23.6  20.0
  91st - 95th Percentiles  25.2  21.9
  96th - 99th Percentiles  27.1  24.2
  Top 1%                   35.1  30.2

So is "Average Individual Income Tax Rate (percent)"

  Year                     1979  2018
  Lowest Quintile          -0.2 -12.0
  Second Quintile           4.1  -2.1
  Middle Quintile           7.4   2.2
  Fourth Quintile          10.1   5.9
  Highest Quintile         15.9  15.4
  All Quintiles            11.1   9.4
  81st - 90th  Percentiles 12.3   9.0
  91st - 95th Percentiles  14.1  11.4
  96th - 99th Percentiles  16.8  15.5
  Top 1%                   22.6  23.5

That makes it really hard to accept your claim that "Taxes have never been as high as now in recent history."

Now, sure, there are state taxes, and sales taxes, and payroll taxes, and all sorts of other taxes.

Still, where do you get the numbers to back your statement that after 40+ years of Reaganism and unending legislative attempts to lower taxes, that the numbers now are higher than ever before?

In case anyone was curious, United States federal tax receipts were $463 billion in FY1979 and $3.33 trillion in FY2018, a growth of a factor of ~7.2 = ~5.2%/year. The population has grown by a factor of ~1.44 = ~0.95%/year and the effect of inflation has been a factor of ~3.63 = ~3.36%/year, which multiply together to a factor of ~5.2 = ~4.33%/year. The receipts grew faster by a factor of ~1.38 = 0.82%/year.

This calculation does not consider the growth of expenditures specifically (as opposed to receipts) and similarly does not consider the growth of GDP (as opposed to inflation).

Likewise it makes the false assumption that taxes are collected in the same year that income is received. Beginning in the 1980s, many billions of dollars that were subject to tax ended up in IRAs and 401k retirement plans where taxes are deferred for many decades in most cases. Likewise, like kind exchanges of property also defer huge amounts of taxes. So looking at annual tax receipts omits a huge amount of taxed-but-deferred income.

I don't know if taxes are higher now vs some point in history (probably higher than some, lower than others) but your implicit claim that 'taxes' == 'US Federal Income Tax Rate' is so laughable I can't believe you can make it with a straight face. Not everyone is from the US, and the people from the US know that there are like 5 levels of taxation, from local sales tax to property tax to state income tax, state personal property tax, taxes relabeled as 'fees' to circumvent state rules about new tax creation, tariffs, payroll taxes, etc etc etc etc etc. Then there are taxes like social security, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.

Even if all we look at is US federal income taxes, you don't include them all. Social security is a sum of 12.4% of your income (and it is regressive!). Medicare is 2.9%. These have gone up considerably since 1979 (8.1% total in 1979, 15.3% now)

"so laughable I can't believe you can make it with a straight face"

Which is why I didn't. I specifically pointed out that there are other taxes.

My point was to get ekianjo to present data to support their claim.

Do you have better data?

This reminds me of the guy who lost his keys. He was looking by the street light when his friend asked him if he lost his keys by the light. "No, I lost them over by my car, but it's too dark to see anything over there."

Here is a graph from wikipedia that shows that taxes in the US are in total about as high as they have ever been (which was 2000). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Federal%... You can very clearly see that while Federal taxes are gradually decreasing, that is more than made up by Payroll taxes.

This still directly contradicts the original claim, though. This graphic shows aggregate tax burden was at its highest ever in the late 90s and is currently on a slight downward trend. "About as high" isn't great if you hate taxes, but it isn't what was being disputed.

It's supposed to remind you of Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

As nonameiguess already pointed out, your answer disputes ekianjo's claim, as the peak in your graph was 1999.

As fun as tribal arguing is, I wasn't taking a side. Did you read my post at all? I was saying that the methodology for claiming taxes were lower was so stupid as to defy even any attempt to ascribe good faith.

Let me quote my post for your convenience: "I don't know if taxes are higher now vs some point in history"

I don't know what "tribal arguing" means.

I did read your side. You believe I'm not arguing in good faith. I think that's a misinterpretation. I am not versed in the topic, and I don't pretend to be one. But the exchange was claim/counter-claim/counter-counter-claim without any citations, going nowhere.

While presenting wrong, or at least incomplete numbers, shifts it to one about presenting the actual numbers and what they mean, and if it's justified tax increases.

If that's that's bad faith tribalism, than so be it. But you'll notice the pointless exchange about "most taxes EVAR" has stopped.

It's a trope among liberals in the US that taxes are too low, just look at the marginal rates, they used to be 90%! If they used to be 90%, then it's perfectly reasonable to raise them to 35%... I would guess you've heard this quite a few times (even if you don't agree with it, it's a very commonly presented argument), whether you realize it or not, and you are just repeating it. This is largely how political opinions are formed, people pay attention to the side they want to agree with and they internalize the one sided, often easily debunked arguments that side presents over and over and over. It's a form of voluntary brainwashing. As you said, it's not completely obvious what is true here, but if you ask around you'll find that people have very strong opinions about it and are often willing to argue at great length despite having literally zero information for or against.

The tribal point was that I got 2 responses saying 'technically we aren't at the absolute peak tax rate' based on the graph I posted. Instantly people wanted 'taxes aren't at an all time high' to win, and assume this is because their 'tribe' is the one that wants to raise taxes. If you look at the graph we are very nearly at the peak, and certainly from a historical perspective we are plateauing very near the peak. That's not arguing in good faith to chime in that OP was wrong because technically we are a smidgen below the all time high, and OP said 'all time high' rather than 'near the all time high', so they get an L and their side loses and we can just pretend there's no more detail than that.

Years ago a FB friend posted something along the lines "every country where the debt is 100% of GDP ended up with runaway inflation." (It's been a decade; I've forgotten the exact details.)

It was easy to point out that the US had >100% ratio in the 1940s, due to WWII, without the consequences he postulated.

I then found it was a "tribal point" going around, that he was repeating without investigating.

This claim that taxes now are the highest ever felt like the same sort of "tribal point."

How does one challenge an seemingly wrong assertion without also being labelled "tribal"? Especially in a field so contentious as this where there are position papers upon position papers for- and against- just about every point you can think of.

FWIW, I think the premise is flawed. Rich people put their assets in trusts and foundations, which are not subject to the same taxes, and yet controlled by the them and their family.

(For example, "Patagonia Billionaire Who Gave Up Company Skirts $700 Million Tax Hit; Founder Yvon Chouinard structured the transfer of his firm in a way that keeps control within the family and avoids taxes." - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-15/patagonia... )

Because those savings aren't paid taxes, they don't show up in charts which summarize only those taxes paid.

So when "liberals in the US [talk about how] taxes are too low", I believe it also refers to the legal techniques rich people use to avoid paying taxes, including through laws which were specifically created for this purpose.

I agree 100%, I would guess that he was probably repeating 'taxes are the highest ever' that he heard on a conservative talk show or FoxNews or something. I think the taxes as a % of GDP data is not perfect but it's at least a fairly reliable well studied ratio that avoids the problems with the details of tax rates as you point out, tax rates don't correlate well with taxes paid so looking at them is misleading at best.

>This calculation does not consider the growth of expenditures

edit: was meant as reply to a different comment

Where is the data to back the claim "Taxes have never been as high as now in recent history"?

My data is half-assed, certainly. Surely you should be more critical of someone presenting no data, yes?

> "Average federal tax rates for all households

Wait, so you only pay Federal taxes in the US? That's practical if you only cherry pick a part of the data.

If you read down to the end, I wrote "Now, sure, there are state taxes, and sales taxes, and payroll taxes, and all sorts of other taxes."

I used this to ask for source data for the claim.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com