Have you any idea what a complete idiot you just made yourself out to be? Imagine being laid off -- yes, you personally -- or becoming disabled, or otherwise unable to support yourself when that tax bill gets dropped in your mailbox. Now imagine the Feds coming to your sorry ass door with handcuffs and throwing your disabled, or otherwise unfortunate, ass in debtors prison because you can't pay your tax bill. Please educate yourself a little before you come on a message board and mutter such idiotic, senseless, thoughtless blabber.
It was only over 90% AFTER the first $400,000 which was an insane amount of money in those days. (a house in beverly hills cost about $50k back then, so $400k was HUGE) If you made $425,000, you only get taxed 90% on that last $25k, not the whole $425k. So in that cast you would only have paid $22.5k in taxes. And even then you might have had deductions or exemptions so you would pay much less tax than that. You should stop watching Micheal Moore films as I am pretty sure this is where you got your information that people paid 90% in taxes back then.
Quote from jagadish: American income tax rates from 1944 to 1963 were 92% You come across as rather ignorant and biased in you approach to this topic. show your proof of ignorance.
Back when the highest marginal rate was 92%, the bracket was at such a high income that a very small amount of people actually paid that rate....like only a few hundred. It was the real super wealthy who were paying the 92% rate (not that this made it right to confiscate their much income just because they were wealthy...) In contrast today when we talk about raising taxes on the "wealthy"...those who make 250k we are talking about the kind of income that is commonly earned by married 2 income professionals and small business owners.
American income tax rates from 1944 to 1963 were 92% http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_history-june2010.pdf [PDF]
Nah, just divide up Govt expenses, pass the liabilities on to each family, demand payment, punish the non-payers, and let the people understand how much their government spends in their name. Then, if the people don't rise up and stamp down the spending/polticians, they deserve the slavery they suffer.
There is a word for what you are describing. It's called Tyranny and many wars have been fought over it.
That's the point. You want govt to spend your money, your kids' money, your grandchildren's money, and pretend it's not being spent? Everyone should KNOW their share of our liabilities... and if there needs to be a war to bring our house in order, then better now than in 20 years when the Chinese land to collect on their debts.
As I stated in my previous post: It's true that "published" tax rates went has high as 91%, but nobody actually paid those rates. During 1940s-1960s there was something called "non-recourse leveraged tax shelters" that wealthy people used to lower their taxes. The last of the allowable non-recourse leveraged tax shelters were eliminated in the 1980s. A study done by the IRS in 2003 showed that the upper 1% of income earners in the 1950s paid about 25% of their income in federal taxes. In other words, even though the published rates rates went as high as 90%, the actual "effective rate" was only 25% because of the use of tax shelters. The other thing to keep in mind is that the high rates back in the 1950s didn't kick until you made over $200k (70%), and then again at $400k (91%). In today's dollars that would be about $2.5 million and $5 million.
One thing that often gets ignored in these discussions are non-income tax increases over the years. For example, increases in gasoline/tobacco taxes (astronomically higher than in the 1950s), alcohol, property taxes, state tax rates (doubled in my lifetime in some places), etc.