On the individual side, all personal interest (e.g. credit card interest) was deductible and you could claim dependents (and their corresponding deductions) without any evidence (like a child's social security number).
The second one isn't a deduction, it was inadequate fraud and tax evasion detection. It's like saying that the tax rates didn't matter back then because you were a child and therefore paid no tax.
Regardless, in aggregate it means the effective rate was lower.
If the subway costs $1 and 50% of the jump the turn-style 50% of the time the cost to ride the subway in aggregate is $0.75
Sure, if you take some asinine ideological hard line about the goodness or badness of taxation you'll probably get your panties in a knot but if you look at it from the perspective of who's spending money in the economy a little bit of broadly applied fraud and a little bit of tax reduction are the same thing because they shuffle money around in the same manner.
> If the subway costs $1 and 50% of the jump the turn-style 50% of the time the cost to ride the subway in aggregate is $0.75
No, you have jumpers whose aggregate cost is $0.50 and non-jumpers whose aggregate cost is $1.00. The revenues realized are $0.75 a ride, but the costs aren't distributed evenly. If the jumpers were caught, then the cost could decline to $0.75, the nonjumpers would pay less and the jumpers would pay more. That world is better for the half of the population that doesn't jump.
It may be derived from principal but that does not change the fact that pretty much any take that's out there on either extreme (in this case "taxation is theft" on one side and "taxes are inherently good" on the other) is going to be regarded as asinine by the bulk of the population. Do you disagree?
No. I'm willing to stand that the majority of the population will agree that outright lying about numbers on your tax forms to "lower your bill" is wrong.
People can still claim children without any evidence. I worked with a cook who claimed like 6 or 7 kids. He never filed taxes at the end of the year so he didn’t need a SSN for them.
back then you could file your taxes with 6 or 7 kids and no one would check
that is not the same as claiming you have 6 or 7 kids that will be filed on your taxes and then just never filing it. Once filed he would need SSN for those kids, or he would owe taxes