Marginal Tax Rate Quotes

There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact--in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself--of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed using taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PC progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates. [...] In other words, PCE acts as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo.

the decrease in the top marginal income tax rate led to an explosion of very high incomes, which then increased the political influence of the beneficiaries of the change in the tax laws, who had an interest in keeping top tax rates low or even decreasing them further and who could use their windfall to finance political parties, pressure groups, and think tanks.

In contrast to what many people in Britain and the United States believe, the true figures on growth (as best one can judge from official national accounts data) show that Britain and the United States have not grown any more rapidly since 1980 than Germany, France, Japan, Denmark, or Sweden. In other words, the reduction of top marginal income tax rates and the rise of top incomes do not seem to have stimulated productivity (contrary to the predictions of supply-side theory) or at any rate did not stimulate productivity enough to be statistically detectable at the macro level.

... economists recognize that, other things equal, cuts in tax rates reduce tax revenues in percentage terms by less than the tax-rate reductions. Similarly, tax-rate increases do not raise tax revenues by as much in percentage terms as the tax-rate increases. This is true because changes in marginal tax rates alter taxpayer behavior and thus affect taxable income.

Unfortunately, the term “identity politics” has been weaponized. It is most often used by speakers to describe politics as practiced by members of historically marginalized groups. If you’re black and you're worried about police brutality, that’s identity politics. If you’re a woman and you’re worried about the male-female pay gap, that’s identity politics. But if you’re a rural gun owner decrying universal background checks as tyranny, or a billionaire CEO complaining that high tax rates demonize success, or a Christian insisting on Nativity scenes in public squares — well, that just good, old fashioned politics. With a quick sleight of hand, identity becomes something that only marginalized groups have. The term “identity politics,” in this usage, obscures rather than illuminates; it’s used to diminish and discredit the concerns of the weaker groups by making them look self-interested, special pleading in order to clear the agenda for the concerns of stronger groups, which are framed as more rational, proper topics for political debate. But in wielding identity as a blade, we have lost it as a lens, blinding ourselves in a bid for political advantage. WE are left searching in vaid for what we refuse to allow ourselves to see.

I'm a conservative but not because I care very much about the marginal tax rates of the richest Americans, rather I'm a market-oriented localist because I believe in cultural pluralism and I believe in the First Amendment, in voluntarism over compulsion whenever possible, and in as much de-centralized decision-making as is conceivably feasible.

skyrocketing executive pay is fairly well explained by the bargaining model (lower marginal tax rates encourage executives to negotiate harder for higher pay) and does not have much to do with a hypothetical increase in managerial productivity.

America and Greece are at different stops on the same one-way street, all too familiar to us immigrants. There's nothing new about Obama: been there, done that. Nothing could be less hopeful, or less of a change. He's the land where we grew up, with its union bullies and marginal tax rates and government automobiles and general air of decay all re-emerging Brigadoon-like from the mists entirely unspoilt by progress. it's like docking at Ellis Island in 1883, coming down the gangplank, and finding everyone excited about this pilot program they've introduced called "serfdom".

Income inequality has endowed rich families with more political power, which they have used to campaign for lower taxes, which in turn boosts their economic and political power even more, locking in an undemocratic and unjust cycle.[16] We need to interrupt that cycle, which is why I also support increasing the top marginal tax rate and the corporate tax rate.

The most overwhelming proof that tax incentives have a relatively minor effect on individual charity is the tremendous consistency over time of giving as a percentage of income. Although the tax code has changed frequently and dramatically over the past twenty-three years, giving as a share of personal income has hovered around 1.83 percent. This measure reached as high as 1.95 percent in 1989 and as low as 1.71 percent in 1985. The narrow range has persisted even though the top marginal tax rate has fluctuated in that period from between 28 and 70 percent.

decrease in the top marginal income tax rate led to an explosion of very high incomes, which then increased the political influence of the beneficiaries of the change in the tax laws, who had an interest in keeping top tax rates low or even decreasing them further and who could use their windfall to finance political parties, pressure groups, and think tanks.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such interventionist measures as Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public works project in the history of the United States—the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which linked the nation together with four-lane (and occasionally six-lane) interstate highways covering forty thousand miles. The GOP also backed large expansion of federally supported higher education. And to many Republicans at the time, a marginal income tax rate of more than 70 percent on top incomes was not repugnant.

From World War II until 1981 the top marginal income tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican whom no one ever accused of being a socialist, the top rate was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, Americans with incomes of over $1 million (in today’s dollars) paid a top marginal rate, on average, of 52 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the top tax rate on capital gains was 35 percent. But as income and wealth have accumulated at the top, so has the political power to reduce taxes. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were extended for two years in December 2010, capped top rates at 35 percent, their lowest level in more than half a century, and reduced capital gains taxes to 15 percent.

We have a crisis in this nation, and it has nothing to do with regulatory reform or marginal tax rates. This book is not going to be about politics. (Sorry to disappoint.) It’s about something deeper and more meaningful. Something a little harder to quantify but a lot more personal. Despite the astonishing medical advances and technological leaps of recent years, average life span is in decline in America for the third year in a row. This is the first time our nation has had even a two-year drop in life expectancy since 1962—when the cause was an influenza epidemic. Normally, declines in life expectancy are due to something big like that—a war, or the return of a dormant disease. But what’s the “big thing” going on in America now? What’s killing all these people? The 2016 data point to three culprits: Alzheimer’s, suicides, and unintentional injuries—a category that includes drug and alcohol–related deaths. Two years ago, 63,632 people died of overdoses. That’s 11,000 more than the previous year, and it’s more than the number of Americans killed during the entire twenty-year Vietnam War. It’s almost twice the number killed in automobile accidents annually, which had been the leading American killer for decades. In 2016, there were 45,000 suicides, a thirty-year high—and the sobering climb shows no signs of abating: the percentage of young people hospitalized for suicidal thoughts and actions has doubled over the past decade.1 We’re killing ourselves, both on purpose and accidentally. These aren’t deaths from famine, or poverty, or war. We’re literally dying of despair.

But then I don’t begin to understand a lot of things about Sweden and Norway. It’s as if they are determined to squeeze all the pleasure out of life. They have the highest income-tax rates, the highest VAT rates, the harshest drinking laws, the dreariest bars, the dullest restaurants, and television that’s like two weeks in Nebraska. Everything costs a fortune. Even the purchase of a bar of chocolate leaves you staring in dismay at your change, and anything larger than that brings tears of pain to your eyes. It’s bone-crackingly cold in the winter and it does nothing but rain the rest of the year. The most fun thing to do in these countries is walk around semi-darkened shopping centers after they have closed, looking in the windows of stores selling wheelbarrows and plastic garden furniture at prices no one can afford. On top of that, they have shackled themselves with some of the most inane and restrictive laws imaginable, laws that leave you wondering what on earth they were thinking about. In Norway, for instance, it is illegal for a barman to serve you a fresh drink until you have finished the previous one. Does that sound to you like a matter that needs to be covered by legislation? It is also illegal in Norway for a bakery to bake bread on a Saturday or Sunday. Well, thank God for that, say I. Think of the consequences if some ruthless Norwegian baker tried to foist fresh bread on people at the weekend. But the most preposterous law of all, a law so pointless as to scamper along the outer margins of the surreal, is the Swedish one that requires motorists to drive with their headlights on during the daytime, even on the sunniest summer afternoon. I would love to meet the guy who thought up that one. He must be head of the Department of Dreariness. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if on my next visit to Sweden all the pedestrians are wearing miners’ lamps.

If the global pie stayed the same size, there was no margin for credit. Credit is the difference between today’s pie and tomorrow’s pie. If the pie stays the same, why extend credit? It would be an unacceptable risk unless you believed that the baker or king asking for your money might be able to steal a slice from a competitor. So it was hard to get a loan in the premodern world, and when you got one it was usually small, short-term, and subject to high interest rates. Upstart entrepreneurs thus found it difficult to open new bakeries and great kings who wanted to build palaces or wage wars had no choice but to raise the necessary funds through high taxes and tariffs. That was fine for kings (as long as their subjects remained docile), but a scullery maid who had a great idea for a bakery and wanted to move up in the world generally could only dream of wealth while scrubbing down the royal kitchen’s floors. The Magic Circle of the Modern Economy It was lose-lose. Because credit was limited, people had trouble financing new businesses. Because there were few new businesses, the economy did not grow. Because it did not grow, people assumed it never would, and those who had capital were wary of extending credit. The expectation of stagnation fulfilled itself.

the United States and in western Europe, the compromise between the plutocrats and everyone else worked. Economic growth soared and income inequality steadily declined. Between the 1940s and 1970s in the United States the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else shrank; the income share of the top 1 percent fell from nearly 16 percent in 1940 to under 7 percent in 1970. In 1980, the average U.S. CEO made forty-two times as much as the average worker. By 2012, that ratio had skyrocketed to 380. Taxes were high—the top marginal rate was 70 percent—but robust economic growth of an average 3.7 percent per year between 1947 and 1977 created a broadly shared sense of optimism and prosperity. This was the golden age of the American middle class, and it is no accident that our popular culture remembers it so fondly. The western Europe experience was broadly similar—strong economic growth, high taxes, and an extensive social welfare network.

Quality investing focuses on a company’s ability to invest capital at high rates of return: post-tax levels of high-teens (and higher) are possible. Three elements drive corporate cash return on investment: asset turns, profit margins and cash conversion. Asset turns measure how efficiently a company generates sales from additional assets, which can vary greatly depending on the asset intensity of the industry itself; margins reflect the benefits of those incremental sales; and cash conversion reflects a company’s working capital intensity and the conservatism of its accounting policies.

As income taxes and capital-gains taxes were reduced in the United States beginning in the 1980s, the share of federal taxes paid by “the rich” steadily went up. From 1980 to 2010, as the top 1 percent increased their share of before-tax income from 9 percent to 15 percent, their share of the individual income tax soared from 17 percent to 39 percent of the total paid. Their share of total federal taxes more than doubled during a period when the highest marginal tax rate was cut in half, from 70 percent to 35.5 percent. The wealthy, in short, are already paying more than their fair share of taxes, and the growth in their wealth and incomes has had nothing to do with tax avoidance or deflecting the tax burden to the middle class.

*Hong Kong’s maximum tax (the “standard rate”) has normally been 15 percent, effectively capping the marginal rate at high income levels (in exchange for no personal exemptions).

In the United States, the top marginal tax rate was above 90 percent from 1951 to 1963. It declined afterward, but remained high. Under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, top tax rates came down from 70 percent to less than 30 percent. Bill Clinton pushed them back up, but only to 40 percent. Since then they have bounced up and down, as the US presidency passes between Democrats and Republicans, but they have never gone much higher than 40 percent.

He rejected with scorn as crude, novel and unproven the notion associated with the US economist Art Laffer that marginal tax cuts could yield substantially higher tax revenues and that they had a crucial role in accelerating economic growth.8 And he also favoured according a role to the exchange rate that orthodox monetarists would not.

All in all, therefore, it seems to us that high marginal income tax rates, applied only to very high incomes, are a perfectly sensible way to limit the explosion of top income inequality. They would not be extortionary, since very few people will end up paying them; top managers will simply not get these kinds of income anymore. And from all we see, they won’t discourage anybody to work as hard as they can. To the extent they affect people’s choice of career, it will likely be in a positive direction. This is not to deny the importance of structural economic changes, which have made it increasingly difficult for those with low education to succeed, generating an increase in inequality even within the remaining 99 percent.

at the country level, there is a strong correlation between the size in the cuts in top tax rates between 1970 and today, and the increase in inequality. Germany, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, and Switzerland, where top marginal tax rates stayed high, did not experience sharp increases in top income shares. In contrast, the United States, Ireland, Canada, the UK, Norway, and Portugal cut the top tax rates significantly and experienced large increases in top income shares.

If this 80% top marginal rate were applied to earnings over $500,000, Piketty says, the tax regime would help to even out inequality without stunting economic growth. Beyond the income

The irony is that just as markets started delivering more unequal outcomes, tax policy asked less of the top. The top marginal tax rate was lowered from 70 percent under Carter to 28 percent under Reagan; it went up to 39.6 percent under Clinton and down finally to 35 percent under George W. Bush.54 This reduction was supposed to lead to more work and savings, but it didn’t.55

Regressives say small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax. Don’t believe this, either. Only just over 1 percent of small-business owners earn enough to be taxed at the top rate—and that’s just on the portion of their incomes exceeding $379,000. The

During the twentieth century, however, the size, scope, and power of government exploded. Total government spending increased from 6.73 percent of GDP in 1906 to 37.79 percent of GDP in 2014.[2] The dollar has lost more than 95 percent of its value due to the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Top marginal income tax rates have been as high as 94 percent. Entitlement programs now constitute more than 60 percent of the federal budget. And businesses are hog-tied by more than 175,000 pages of red tape in the Code of Federal Regulations. What

As the 2019 elections were approaching, the Modi government felt the need to appear less pro-rich and more pro-poor again. But the union budget passed in February was somewhat a missed opportunity so far as the peasants were concerned. No loan waivers were announced in their favor, simply an enhanced interest subvention on loans and an annual income support of Rs 6,000 (80 USD)—6 percent of a small farmer’s yearly income—to all farmers’ households owning two hectares or fewer.131 In fact, the union budget was once again more geared to pleasing the middle class. The income tax exemption limit jumped from Rs 200,000 (2,667 USD) to 250,000 (3,333 USD), and the income tax rate up to Rs 5 lakh (6,667 USD) was reduced from 10 to 5 percent. The income tax on an income of Rs 10 lakh (13,333 USD) dropped from Rs 110,210 (1,470 USD) to Rs 75,000 (1,000 USD).132 The poor were doubly affected by the fiscal policy of the Modi government in 2014–2019: not only did the tax cuts in favor of the middle class, the abolition of the wealth tax, and, more importantly, the reduction of the corporate tax rates have to be offset by increased indirect taxes, but the stagnation of fiscal resources did not allow the government of India to spend more on public education and public health—all the more so as Narendra Modi wanted to reduce the fiscal deficit. First of all, tax collection diminished. The exchequer “lost” Rs 1.45 lakh crore (1.933 billion USD) in the reduction of the corporate tax, for instance. That was the main reason why gross direct tax collection dipped 4.92 percent133 in 2019–2020, a fiscal year during which gross tax collections were less than those in 2018–2019. Tax collections had never declined on a year-on-year basis since 1961–1962.134 Second, government expenditures diminished. The central government reduced its spending on education from 0.63 percent of GDP in 2013–2014 to 0.47 percent in 2017–2018. The trend was marginally better on the public health front, where the Center’s spending declined from 0.37 percent of GDP in 2013–2014 to 0.34 percent in 2015–2016, before rising again to reach 0.38 percent in 2016–2017.

Comparisons between America and the Scandinavian countries typically focus on the top marginal tax rate. In America, it’s around 46 percent when you combine federal and state income taxes. This compares with Norway at 39 percent, Sweden at 56 percent and Denmark at 60 percent. Norway’s top marginal income tax rate is actually lower than that of the United States. Sweden and Denmark’s rates are substantially higher. But

the Republican Party’s adoption of policies that voters perceived as anti-Black (opposition to affirmative action and welfare, harsh policing and sentencing) won them millions more white voters than their unpopular economic agenda would have attracted. The result was a revolution in American economic policy: from high marginal tax rates and generous public investments in the middle class such as the GI Bill to a low-tax, low-investment regime that resulted in less than 1 percent annual income growth for 90 percent of American families for thirty years. According to Roemer and Lee, the culprit was racism. “We compute that voter racism reduced the income tax rate by 11–18 percentage points.” They conclude, “Absent race as an issue in American politics, the fiscal policy in the USA would look quite similar to fiscal policies in Northern Europe.

1935 tax bill, then popularly called the “Soak the Rich Tax,” the top marginal income tax rate for individuals rose to 75 percent (versus as low as 25 percent in 1930). By 1941, the top personal tax rate was 81 percent, and the top corporate tax rate was 31 percent, having started at 12 percent in 1930. Roosevelt also imposed a number of other taxes. Despite all of these taxes and the pickup in the economy that helped raise tax revenue, budget deficits increased from around 1 percent of GDP to about 4 percent of GDP because the spending increases were so large.5 From 1933 until the end of 1936 the stock market returned over 200 percent, and the economy grew at a blistering average real rate of about 9 percent. In 1936, the Federal Reserve tightened money and credit to fight inflation and slow an overheating economy, which caused the fragile US economy to fall back into recession and the other major economies to weaken with it, further raising tensions within and between countries.

Reagan inherited a prime interest rate of 20.5 percent, making it hard to start a new business or buy a new home or car. The top marginal income tax rate stood at 70 percent.

These conditions were all provided for by the Boomers’ elders, who worked and saved to ensure that the fiscal house was in reasonable order when it was passed down. Doing so required older generations to tax themselves at rates that no politician today, however far Left, would dare propose. When possible, it was pay as you go, so unlike more recent wars, the Korean War was substantially financed out of current tax receipts, as were many of the great infrastructure projects, whose costs were overwhelmingly borne by earlier generations even though later generations would reap so much of their benefit. In cases where no level of tax could balance the budget, as was the case with World War II, prior generations retired the debt as quickly as possible. Motivated by fiscal probity, Americans paid extraordinary taxes for two decades, with the highest marginal rate a downright confiscatory 94 percent in 1945 (against which today’s 39.6 percent, the source of so much present angst, seems modest).17 The result of these sacrifices was that, by the 1960s, World War II debt had been reduced to a manageable size. Taxes could therefore be lowered, though the top rate remained a hefty 70 percent.

Buybacks: How the Game Works Imagine a company – let’s call it FinEng Corp – with sales of $1 billion and a 5 per cent profit margin. The $50 million of profits are taxed at a 30 per cent rate. The company has 500 million shares outstanding and shareholders’ equity of $500 million. The shares trade at 15 times earnings. The corporate incentive plan provides senior executives with 50 million stock options, which strike at the current market price. At this point, FinEng has no

Consider the following example: If you have $100,000 in a CD and it grows 2%, you have a taxable event. You will have $102,000 in your account at the end of the year, but you will have to pay federal and state tax on every last bit of that 2% growth. So, $2,000 gets thrown right on top of all your other income and is taxed at your highest marginal tax rate. Assuming marginal tax rates of 30% (24% federal, 6% state), you would owe the IRS $600. So you didn’t really experience $2,000 of growth, you only experienced $1,400. Thus, your after-tax rate of return on that $100,000 is only 1.4%. This annual taxation is one of the perils of the taxable bucket.

Because many of the itemized deductions phase out before retirement, most retirees are stuck with the standard deduction. So, if you need $120,000 per year of income in retirement and your deductions are only $24,000, then your taxable income would be $96,000 per year. That puts you at a marginal federal tax rate of 22%. Throw in another 6% (on average) for state tax, and you’re looking at a marginal tax rate of 28%. That’s a lot higher than most retirees are anticipating!

1921 the top marginal tax rate was 77 per cent. By 1929 we had managed to bring it down to 22 per cent.

The hearts of many on the Right are in cutting marginal tax rates and eliminating the capital gains tax. Good causes to be sure. But what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his country? Is whether the GDP rises at 2 or 3 or 4 percent as important as whether or not Western civilization endures and we remain one nation under God and one people? With the collapsing birthrate, open borders, and the triumph of an anti-Western multiculturalism, that is what is at issue today — the survival of America as a nation, separate and unique, and of Western civilization itself — and too many conservatives have gone AWOL in the last great fight of our lives.

In all likelihood, we could raise more revenue by increasing marginal tax rates on the highest income earners, for instance by introducing new tax brackets at the one-million- and ten-million-dollar levels of annual income.

No one loves Denmark’s high marginal tax rate, but surveys show they tolerate it. As a result, everyone has health care, young people are nudged into education because it’s free, and all citizens have a safety net should they find themselves down on their luck or eager to find a job that better suits them.

The annual Tax Statistics Bulletin, jointly released by the Treasury and SARS, revealed in November 2016 exactly how narrow that tax base is, noting that 60 per cent of South Africa’s corporate tax comes from just 325 large companies. The contribution of corporate tax has, in turn, steadily declined to 18,1 per cent of total tax revenue, down from a peak of 26,7 per cent before the financial crisis in 2008/09.184 The tax base associated with the private sector is shrinking. The same sorry state is evident in personal tax. In the 2017 budget, the finance minister announced a 45 per cent marginal tax rate for individuals earning above R1,5 million per annum, a rate that would apply to a mere 105 668 people out of a total population of some 55 million.

Investor Jim Grant once said: To suppose that the value of a common stock is determined purely by a corporation’s earnings discounted by the relevant interest rates and adjusted for the marginal tax rate is to forget that people have burned witches, gone to war on a whim, risen to the defense of Joseph Stalin and believed Orson Welles when he told them over the radio that the Martians had landed.

Investor Jim Grant once said: To suppose that the value of a common stock is determined purely by a corporation’s earnings discounted by the relevant interest rates and adjusted for the marginal tax rate is to forget that people have burned witches, gone to war on a whim, risen to the defense of Joseph Stalin and believed Orson Welles when he told them over the radio that the Martians had landed. That’s

The following is a list of the most common sources of provisional income: One-half of your Social Security income Any distributions taken out of your tax-deferred bucket (IRAs, 401(k)s, etc.) Any 1099 or interest generated from your taxable-bucket investments Any employment income Any rental income Interest from municipal bonds The IRS adds up all your provisional income and, based on that total and your marital status, determines what percentage of your Social Security benefits will become taxed. That percentage of your Social Security benefits is then taxed at your highest marginal tax rate. The provisional income thresholds are outlined below.