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Comment by fortes | Hacker News Reader

Sigh, why do these articles always conveniently ignore payroll taxes?

Or that the extremely wealthy make most of their money via capital gains.

The capital gains rate is 23.8% for those with high income.

That's just federal capital gains tax. You also need to consider state taxes. In California you pay ordinary income tax rates on capital gains of up to 13.3% for people with incomes over a million dollars. So the total tax on a capital gain in California can be as high as 37.1%.

And likewise with income taxes. The paper cited I the source article accounts only for fed taxes. Cali income tax would toss another 8-10% on top of that 33.x% number.

Low tax America!

Well, I guess it is low tax it you're not rich, haha.

In California the highest marginal total income tax rate is 56.7%. While this is for incomes over a million dollars, if you make around $100,000, you face a marginal tax rate of 52.6%.

I'm sure there are places with even higher marginal taxes but these don't seem low.

BTW - What is really fucked up is the way very poor people face the very highest marginal tax rates due to means testing of various programs (often over 100%) but that's another story.

It has been as high as around 90%:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Mariginal_Tax_R...

There were loads of loopholes back then.

And before someone responds with, "there are loopholes now too, har har!": No, there really aren't those kinds of loopholes anymore. The 90% income tax existed in name only, whereas today there actually are people paying ~50% income tax in the US.

which is the elephant in the room when income tax rates are discussed particularity in the uk where the line is "on noes entrepreneurs will flee if the highest rate income tax goes from 45 to 50".

NO real entrepreneur cares about his salary after a certain point its all about capital gain - the fantasists and Muppets on dragons den are not real entrepreneurs.

That is the trouble thease days where the political class go from uni straight into the political machine with no out side job (until they get a few director ships or quangos)

Did they do that? That sounds like a pretty elementary mistake, and since it's the NYT it isn't in the direction I'd expect.

Payroll taxes are of course included.

Payroll taxes are included!

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