Historical US Tax Rates

The effective income tax rates in the US in the 1950s, even on the top 1%, were barely higher than they are today and in many cases lower. The tax structure was significantly different, so a naive comparison might lead you to believe otherwise.

A 90% tax rate doesn’t actually mean the government collects that money. It just forces the money to be spent in different ways. Which is maybe a good idea! But that’s the actual end result.People love to quote US income tax rates of the past. But tax revenue to GDP has been almost perfectly flat since WW2. Despite huge fluctuations in personal income tax rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

My country had a top tax rate of 85% at one point (with a 10% premium for unearned income). Society didn't collapse; in fact many of us remember that as a golden age.

You were confusing the top income tax rate with the effective tax rate. When the top income tax was 91% (from 1951-1964), the capital gain tax was 25%. So the effective tax rate paid by the rich was always the same, infact the rich pay more in tax today at the current top 35% rate than when it was 91%!

> Tax rates on the rich are at historically low levelsNot really. The income tax didn't exist before 1913 and the government was way smaller so there wasn't a even need to collect a lot of taxes. Are you thinking of the 50s? Because even in that time people just avoided to declare all their income (it was easier back then) or used other loop holes to avoid paying taxes [1][1] <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/" rel="nofollo

Small surprise: top marginal tax rates used to be 70-90% from the 40s to the 70s.https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-ma...

The US had a tax rate of over 90% for the wealthy in the 1950s (although with loopholes they could push it lower, like now). Didn't seem to have much of an effect on the wealthy, and the US working class did very well.

80% is not over the top. The top marginal tax rate in the USA was over 60% for half of the last century, topping out at 94% in 1944. The tax rates imposed on the top incomes have only recently (Reagan era) come down to such ridiculously low levels as we have today.

Taxing them into the ground would indeed be a bad idea. It's a question of levels. Tax rates in the 20th century for 55 years were above 50%, and for 45 of those were above 70%[1]. You get a lot more for being in the US than a certain tax rate.[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_...

Weirdly enough, US has had a significant time period with top marginal rates exceeding 90%. Interestingly, GDP growth rates during that time have not been repeated since.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_Sta...<a href="http://ablog.typepad.com/.a/6a00e554717cc988330147e220e3f9970b-pi" rel="nofoll