Hi all. I was wondering if you could help me out with a little project I’m putting together with a couple of friends. I’m after some information about tax revenues over the last 50-70 years or so and sadly my google-fu has let me down considerably. What I’m after is a chart or a graph which shows income tax rates over the last few decades paired alongside how much money the federal government actually collected. For instance, it might look something like this:
Top Income tax rate|Next rate|Next Rate|etc...|Total Tax Collected
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Nixon
Etc...
Or it might look completely different, I dunno. That’s kinda sorta the idea anyway. If anyone knows of any graphs or charts or studies which show this information I’d be massively grateful. Cheers in advance!
And on the same site is this, which gives the tax brackets for married couples filing jointly dating back to 1947. I hadn’t realized that there were so many “brackets” before the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Without even looking at the data, I can guess that tax rates were much higher in the 50s under Eisenhower and receipts were much lower. Due to inflation, incomes were substantially lower back then. You’re going to need to deflate current tax receipts by inflation or some other number like GDP to make a valid comparison. You’ll also need to do this on a per capita basis. Obviously more revenue is collected from 300 million people than 150 million.