While I don’t disagree in principle – corporations need to be paying taxes, and in fact, so do wealthy individuals – the effective tax rate on wealth since the 50s has changed very little. Those extreme tax rates you see from the era – 91%, 80%, etc., often only applied to a literal handful of households or businesses.
And, again, because our tax system is progressive, those extreme rates only applied to income above extreme (for the era) thresholds.
The biggest issue is not the tax rate, but that corporations (and rich individuals) have so many different ways to avoid paying any tax at all. To the point that, in 2020, it was literally newsworthy that Amazon had to pay more than $0.
And don’t forget that the corporate tax rate was “insane” compared to current times. Something like 80%+.
While I don’t disagree in principle – corporations need to be paying taxes, and in fact, so do wealthy individuals – the effective tax rate on wealth since the 50s has changed very little. Those extreme tax rates you see from the era – 91%, 80%, etc., often only applied to a literal handful of households or businesses.
And, again, because our tax system is progressive, those extreme rates only applied to income above extreme (for the era) thresholds.
The biggest issue is not the tax rate, but that corporations (and rich individuals) have so many different ways to avoid paying any tax at all. To the point that, in 2020, it was literally newsworthy that Amazon had to pay more than $0.
“Insane” for the rich too. The top tax bracket was taxed at 91%. But they don’t want to go back to that 1950s.