
Who Is Paying Their ‘Fair Share’? - smacktoward
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/01/who-is-paying-their-fair-share-more-on-the-history-of-tax-rates/581407/
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jtlienwis
Left out of the charts, is the entire 19th century up until 1913. Under a
regime of NO income tax, the United States moved from a rural, agrarian
society to the worlds leader in oil, steel, autos, airplanes, radios,
telephones etc. Immigrants, like my grandmother, who arrived penniless in
1911, flocked to the country. But that was before we became 'progressive'.

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masonic
Also left out is the 21-point drop initiated by JFK.

And the _effective_ marginal rates imposed via AMT for many years.

Neither fact fits _The Atlantic_ 's narrative.

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Arnt
Elaborate?

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masonic
JFK's administration dropped the top marginal rate from 71% to 50%.

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Arnt
So just an irrelevant factoid. Sigh. For a moment I thought someone had found
enough data to compute effective marginal rates. That would have been
interesting.

The marginal rate on its own, without the rules that are used to compute the
taxable income, is IMO about as meaningful as the wordcount of the rules.

