Boy, is our tax system in a mess.
The mess began in 1913, when the 16th Amendment was passed and Americans were forced to pay federal taxes on their income.
People who made more than $3,000 — a lot of dough in those days — had to pay 1 percent to the feds. The top rate, which then applied to the superrich, was a whopping 7 percent!
Those rates didn’t last long.
During World War I, the top rate shot up to 77 percent to finance our war efforts. After the war, it dropped down to 25 percent — still 17 points higher than it was before the war.
Tax rates held steady until Franklin Delano “Big Government” Roosevelt came to town. Under FDR, the top rate shot up to 78 percent by 1936.
Then, during World War II, the top rate hit 94 percent. After the war, it remained above 90 percent — into the early 1960s.
JFK promised to get America moving again and he did. Under his administration, the top rate was lowered from 90 percent to 70 percent — with lots of loopholes to shield income from taxes.
The economy took off, but in spite of the positive results — lower taxes cause growth, duh! — the top rate wasn’t lowered again until Ronald Reagan came to town.
In 1981, Reagan lowered the top rate to 50 percent. In 1986, he led the charge for simplification, helping eliminate most loopholes and reducing 15 income brackets to two. The top rate was lowered to 28 percent, the bottom rate to 15 percent.
The economy exploded.
But in 1990, George H.W. “Don’t Read My Lips” Bush caved to Congress and raised taxes. He also added a third income bracket.
Then, in 1993, Bill “Franklin Delano” Clinton raised taxes yet again, adding two more brackets. Clinton even raised taxes retroactively on dead people — who’d thought they’d finally found tax relief.
In the mid-’90s, with Republicans running Congress, taxes were lowered somewhat, but were also made extremely complicated as hundreds of changes were made to the tax code.
Whereas the tax code was 16 pages in 1913, it is now more than….
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Our Marxist tax system sucks the life out of our country and we ignore it. Our graduated income tax system was introduced in the Communist Manifesto in 1848.
Economist Art Laffer pointed out that the cost of complying with our tax system adds 30 percent to the taxes themselves. The IRS points out that non-compliance, or the tax gap, adds another 30 percent to our tax cost. Eric Schlosser wrote a book about the black market of $1 trillion that goes untouched by our tax system. An income tax doesn’t work.
Some people don’t like the idea of a sales tax. But, that is exactly what the corporate tax is. Businesses add the cost of taxes to the cost of their product or service. So consumers end up paying the corporate tax. The hidden cost of the corporate tax is roughly 22 percent depending on the industry.
On 11-17-11 the Joint Economic Committee held a hearing on tax reform. Most were there to move around the deck chairs on the Titanic. Dan Mastromarco explained the FairTax and how it is the jobs bill we need. Tax reform in the 1980’s created 20 years of economic growth with 31 million new jobs. The FairTax can outperform that.
I don’t make a lot of money, but if my country needs my taxes to keep the country running, I wouldn’t mind paying them IF…………….the darn fools would use it wisely, and do for our country, OUR OWN country with it as it is intended to me, rather, what it WAS intended to be used for……….the upkeep and well being of America, and the American citizens. We pay a lot of taxes, on everything, down to when we are dead, and no longer earning a salary. None of what they do with it goes to where it is meant to be, or should be going. Waste, waste and more waste is all that is “done” with it. Sent to countries who would just as soon see us dead as to see us at all. So if things were as they should be, which they aren’t and haven’t been for how long, IF they were as they should properly be, Americans probably would be most happy to pay into a system that actually works, and cares for them, and not everyone else. As it stands now, we are simply being used to feed the greed, and corruption in the “capitol” of liars, thieves, perverts, scoundrels, and enemies of their own people, We, The People. Our own “leaders” are our worst enemies in this country. Or, for that matter, elsewhere, for they do not take care of the people of America, or even America herself!!!!! Just sayin’.
Scrap the entire system, and go to the Fair Tax. That way everyone pays, including visitors, illegals, gangsters etc. With no federal tax on either the individuals or companies/corporations, this move should bring businesses to our shores, employing our people, instead sending business overseas. Businesses can make decisions on what wil be good for them, rather than how to get around the tax code. It really is quite simple.