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Comment by xivzgrev | Hacker News Reader

Small surprise: top marginal tax rates used to be 70-90% from the 40s to the 70s.

https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-ma...

That’s not a meaningful number because the taxable income was calculated differently: https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/effective-income-tax-rate...

The effective tax rate on the top 1% has been quite stable in the post war era.

The title of this piece is “Effective Income Tax Rates Have Fallen for The Top One Percent Since World War II” which seems to directly contradict your statement they have been stable?

Right—they fell sharply from 1945 to 1955 (it looks the data points are sampled every 10 years) but have been pretty stable in the post-war era, as I said. Note that OP stated the top tax rate was lowered starting in the 1970s.

Got it. Thank you. I guess saying “they have been stable after 1955 would have made more sense time than “post-war” but maybe just being pedantic.

How is dramatically lowering since 1970s compatible with stable after 1955? The fact is tax on the rich started going down in the 1970s and since the 90s tax havens and other shenanigans like renting out your own mega yacht to off shore shell companies even though you were using it. And a million other ways these people don’t pay.

For the richest tax is optional to the point where that get loans against their shares rather than pay capital gains tax. It’s an absolute disgrace and it’s got to a point where governments need to taxing them properly.

There were so many deductions and ways of hiding things the effective rate was maybe 20%

Indirectly, we can point to the creation of Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) in the 1960s to ensure that higher income taxpayers paid at least some minimum despite the plentiful deductions. Some of the things not allowed under AMT are state and local tax deductions, interest on mortgage equity debt (not acquistion debt), personal and dependent exemption deductions, deferring tax on compensation due to Incentive Stock Options (ISO), some kinds of accelerated depreciation, and so on.

source?

Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP historically has floated around 18%

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/tax-reve...

Here's the income percentage held by the top 1% 1950-2010

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014Fig...

While its true that its higher now than it was the 1950s-1980s, its an increase of about 15%.

It if was the case that the very high marginal rates were actually being paid, you would expect the percentage of income held by the top 1% to be much higher.

Here's another source with more direct comparison - how much their income they actually paid in tax

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/taxes-on-the-rich...

The period of true fear that communism could be a superior system .

Even though this comment is inaccurate because it just takes a a single figure figure and generalises it to all-of-time, I still feel compelled by to say something like:

Giving money to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

The very to extremely wealthy run nations, why would giving them control of more money, someone else’s money, be a reasonable idea.

I suppose the argument is tax the rich more, and the poor less.

Nah, there’s got to be a better way, like maybe tax everyone less.

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