Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[ieddyi]

The CBO has calculated the effective Federal tax burden for different income groups from 1979 forward (1979-2002; 2004-5). The CBO includes an estimate of the effective Federal income tax, and the effect of all Federal taxes, including Social Security/Medicare and an imputed corporate tax.

For the top 1% of earners, the effective Federal income tax rate has been this:

1979 21.8%
1985 18.9%
1995 23.7%
2005 19.4%

Not quite the wild range one might have expected, given that the top Federal income tax rate was 70% when Reagan took over in 1981 and was first cut precipitously all the way down to 50%.

As to the total effective rate, here we go:

1979 37.0
1985 27.0
1995 36.1
2005 31.2

The big difference is in the imputed corporate tax rate, which is currently quite low. But that is not what Reich was talking about.

Well, he knows all this anyway.

A lot of the chat is quite sensible; I'll plug this:

Q: As an econ professor and Democrat I’m still having trouble with the protectionist talk of the two candidates. Do you think Obama is handling trade issues properly or should he be more pro-free trade?

A: While it makes sense to argue in favor of labor and environmental standards in trade deals (so long as they’re on a sliding scale, and poorer nations don’t have to reach the same standard as richer nations), I don’t think the candidates should feed the current frenzy against free trade.

Posted by T


http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/61xx/doc6133/03-01-EffectiveTaxRates.pdf


http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/12-11-HistoricalTaxRates.pdf