[ljhsiung]

Looking at 1961, where we have 20% and 91% marginal tax rates, this comes out to be ~19k and 1.9mil, adjusted for inflation (2k and 200k nominally).

Compare these days, where we have 12% min and 37% max for 10k and 500k respectively.

If we were to tax at 37% using 1961 threshholds, you'd have to be making 95k inflation adjusted (that's the 38% threshhold), or 10k nominally.

Something else I found fascinating was that we had over 25 brackets back in the day. I can only imagine the headache that would be without an Excel spreadsheet.

People (myself included) might complain about taxes now, I can only imagine in the 60s.

Thanks for the insights, OP.

[giantg2]

It might not be that bad, depending on the simplicity of deductions and other structures.

For example, 401k, IRA, 529, 403b, etc didn't exist. A lot of states and localities didn't have income taxes at that time either. If the deductions and overall tax code was simpler, then calculating the brackets would be easy - you're basically taking the percent times each bracket max until you get to your top bracket, then the amount in that bracket times that percent.

My understanding is that most people could do their taxes just based on the instructions on the back of the form just because there weren't so many deductions, credits, and complicated securities/instruments.

I couldn't find info on the deductions, but this was interesting.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna29861648

[rootusrootus]

> Something else I found fascinating was that we had over 25 brackets back in the day. I can only imagine the headache that would be without an Excel spreadsheet.

I have to imagine that the IRS tax tables aren't a recent creation, so the math should have been similarly easy.