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by JSONwebtoken 3213 days ago
When the tax code was 90%, the effective tax rate was 10-15%. You clearly aren't informed in your history of American industry.

For an individual to make $2 million a year for himself at a 90% tax rate, he would have to own 100% of a company generating $20 million in profit.

Assuming the same individual's skills were worth $200k/yr in market salary, you would be suggesting that the individual must have had a greater than 10% chance of growing a $20 million profit business to achieve an expected value of $200k/yr in compensation. You would be wrong.

However, if the individual only had to generate $2.5 million a year in profit through their business to take home $2 million a year, that 10% success rate is more realistic.

1 comments

I am not sure where is the misunderstanding here. The article talks about marginal tax rate at 91% on the take home pay, not effective tax rate. So I am talking about marginal tax rate here too. So NN% (number to be argued) would apply after 500K, 1M, 2M, number(s) would need to be TBD, like the existing tax code.

I find progressive tax something really nice, since it helps you get started, and is a fair way for everyone to give back when they're super successful (e.g. healthcare, education). You state this is a cancer, but why?