In the 50’s, no one really paid taxes at 90%. There were so many MORE deductions then and the ABILITY to invest in entities that CREATED LOSSES were prevalent during the era and afterwards. Only after Ronald Reagan came to office were tax rates were dropped. BUT, so many deductions were removed and those investments that lost money all went away.
As an example- If you own a rental and it loses more than $25,000 in one year, you can only deduct up to about 25K. If your total earnings are above a certain level, you don’t get to deduct ANY of the loss. Those losses are frozen, not lost, but it could be years before you ever take advantage of that loss. When the rates were at 90%, you would have been able to take all of the loss.
One easy way to reduce your taxes, then, was to own rental property that, while was appreciating, had large operating LOSSES.
So the answer to the question of what affect it had on the economy… not much because there wasn’t extra money (frozen and unavailable). Its the same amount of money we collect now more or less. It is of course that’s not quite true, because of inflation, larger economy and higher population. It wasn’t that the the treasury was loaded with money, although during the Eisenhower years, they did somehow balance the budget, on paper.
We didn’t get higher tax receipts per GDP. However, it did help with inequality. The CEO’s of corporations WEREN’T AS RICH compared with their workers, and it’s even worse now. On average, Owners and bosses overall, made 12:1 the average worker’s salary. Today, it’s over 200:1and growing. After trump’s tax bill, that will be even greater. It encouraged the boss to INVEST IN THE COMPANY. They HAD TO STAY in a lower tax bracket, instead of taking more of the profits for themselves.
In the 50’s, the effective taxes paid by citizens was about 18%, while corporations paid, on average, 14% of their pretax income.
In computing foreign income, state and local taxes included, the rate was about 22%, NOT 39.5%
Today, about 24% of MAJOR CORPORATIONS, PAY NO (ZERO) TAXES.
Nelnet, a Nebraska Corporation will save about $50 million per year under the new tax law. They are giving nearly all of 4,100 employees a $1,000 bonus (Under 6 months will get $500), or about $4.1 million dollars of that. The rest will provide share- holders with a return and use some for investments, which will increase investors dividends.
The new trump tax bill makes the disparity even greater. While NO BUSINESS GENERALLY PAID the 39.5%, dropping it to 21% and MAINTAINING MOST OF THE SAME DEDUCTIONS (only a few have been changed, modified or deleted),
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