I’d say the good times were rollin’ back then. The deficits were small, there were even some surpluses, the economy was booming since American gooods were needed to rebuild Europe and provide for the baby explosion, ex-GIs were buying cars and houses. Not sure what would have happened if the Republicans of the 1950s acted like the GOP of 1937 and the GOP of 2013, but I believe there would have been a wet blanket thrown on the fire.
Nah. Firstly, Obama and Co. are talking about raising marginal rates on a much larger chunk than actually paid these top marginal rates back in the day. Secondly, lowering the corporate tax rate isn’t designed to help “huge corporations” it’s to help businesses that can’t exploit loopholes and level the playing field between the GE’s of the world and smaller local businesses in regards to taxation.
Where did I say they were being disproportionately burdened? I said the The Wealthy in the 50s pay a similar amount of taxes,in terms of percentage of total revenues, as The Wealthy today. Many “liberals” today would tell you that The Wealthy aren’t paying their fair share. If this is true The Wealthy didn’t pay their fair share in the 50s either. This total also ignore state income taxes, sales taxes, etc.
Its pretty simple, Republicans lie about taxes. They had my very intelligent sister believing that our mother was going to be hit by the “death tax” before I explained to her that this wasn’t true because of the exemption. I literally had to remind her that I was a tax lawyer before she stopped saying “but Fox News said…”
A lot of that is affected by military spending.
The top marginal rate really shouldn’t be more than 50%. Once the marginal rate exceeds 50% you can plan your investments so that your marginal rate doesn’t exceed 50%, you simply donate half your investment profits to shelter the income on the other half of your investment profits. It would be great for the ivy league schools, the ballet, opera and shit like that but it doesn’t bring in much more tax revenues.
Wouldn’t this be as easy to resolve as placing a cap on tax deductions for charitable donations? Tax code doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and I don’t believe that we can never have enough revenue in this country again because of a loophole.
I believe this has been pointed out already, but here we go again. If the wealthy have a higher percent of the income, but pay the same percentage of the taxes, then the relative tax burden has changed.
Let’s reverse the situation. Let’s say that in the 50’s, the top quintile earned 80% of the income and paid 80% of the taxes. Then, fast forward to the 2010s and let’s pretend that income inequality has actually decreased instead of increased. So now, the top quintile earns 50% of the income, but still pays 80% of the taxes.
If it was fair in the 50s, that means it’s still fair today. Do you agree?
You may be under a misunderstanding on how tax deductions work. Let me give you a simple example: The tax rate is 60%. You earn $100. If you give $50 to charity then you pay $30 in tax. Your income statement looks like this:
Income: 100 a
Less charitable deductions: (50) b
Taxable income: 50 c = a - b
Taxes: 30 d = c*60%
After-tax income: 20
My formatting above is a mess, let me try explaining my point verbally: charitable donations are deductable against income, not against taxes. If you donate money to charity you don’t have to pay taxes on the donated income, but you still have to pay taxes on all other income. I.e., if you earn $100 and give $30 to charity you pay the same taxes as someone who earned $70.
Hrmm. Actually. now that you mention it. They did this already so forget that comment.
We can have plenty of revenue without a 91% marginal tax rate. Bill Clinton did it with a 39.6% top marginal tax rate. I don’t think we need a top marginal tax rate above 50% and I think that you might start harming the economy if you get much higher than that.
Would you forego funding the foodstamp program for them?
It was largely accomplished through the donation of appreciated property. So lets say you have 100 shares of stock that is worth $10/share. You paid $0.01 per share for the stock. So you donate half the shares and sell the other half. Here is what happens: You get a tax deduction for $500 (50 shares times the $10 market value of the stock), you recognize $499.50 profit when you sell your other 50 shares. The $500 deduction offsets your income. I hope that makes sense.
That seems like a correctable (for lack of a better word) situation. The shares that were donated also generated a $499.50 profit; is any tax paid on that by anyone? He didn’t sell the shares and convert them to $500, but he gave them away in a manner that was equivalent to $500. Seems to me that the profit (in total) should be $999.00, minus the $500.00 donation, pay tax on the $499.00 that he kept.
I wouldn’t necessarily make that change to the tax code in isolation of all other factors. It’s just that with all the brouhaha over rates, it seems the real crux of the matter is in how we define “income”. If we had that sorted out, it might be easier to decide what rates would be reasonable.
You’re example isn’t what happened. Their share of total income rose, and their share of the tax burden rose by a proportionate amount.
To use your example, suppose the top quintile earned 80% and paid 80% of taxes, then 50 years later, they earned 50% and they paid 50% of the taxes. Id say that the rich shoulder a similar burden in both time periods.
the actual numbers are:
1958: 14.7 of income earned by top 3%/ 29.2% of taxes came from 3%
2010: 27.2% of income earned by top 3%/ 51% of taxes came from 3%
Their share of total income rose by 85% but their share of income taxes paid also increased by almost as much, 75%. So basically, the liberal argument that, in the past, we relied more heavily on the rich for our tax revenue falls flat in my opinion.
It may be “correctable” but it may also be a case where we don’t want it corrected. Its this kind of thing that keeps charitable organizations funded when they are funded by the wealthy.
Or, as Kepler points out “I kind of like that stuff.”
It may actually be of benefit to our national discretionary spending and the conservative agenda - if the wealthy are encourage to “donate down” to a 50% bracket - and choose to donate to arts organizations - the NEA might not need to be funded. If they donate to Health and Human Services charities, the need for the government in those space may shrink. It may, in fact, be the best possible compromise for “raising taxes” and “cutting the unnecessary spending” (which doesn’t have that much budgetary impact, but if we can stop bringing up Robert Maplethorpe and Big Bird during every budget cycle, it might keep me from wondering if the record has a scratch in it._
Sure you can fix it by telling people that donating $500 will trigger a tax on $499 of that donation. It would do wonders for the charitable world. Appreciated property is the form that a lot of wealthier people make their charitable donations (at least back when the capital gains rate was 28%, I’m not sure wtf happens these days).
That hardly seems progressive.
And corporate tax revenues as well. Corporate tax revenues basically fell off the chart.
True, and I don’t want to dry up the private funding for truly worthwhile causes, but consider how it affects the statistics as well. To use the numbers from your own example, we have someone who pocketed a profit of $499.50, yet his taxable income appears to be $0. Suppose he made another $500 in salary somewhere, and paid $250 in tax. That looks like he’s paying 50%, but he’s ending the year with $749.50 more than he started. Instead of a crushing 50%, he’s paying more like 25%.
His situation looks a lot different depending on how you do the math.
