Jonathan Ganz wrote:
In article , Martin Baxter wrote:
"Capt. JG" wrote:

You figure Gates worth $65 billion, that's still a pretty good number, one
percent, I'd certainly take it, however, our tax rates have never been nor
had to be that high (well, not until Bush created a deficit from a surplus
maybe).
I think you'll find that the marginal tax on the very rich in the early
60s was about 85%, resulting in an effective rate of nearly 50%. Now
the marginal is something like 35% and the effective rate is less than
15%, zero for some. See http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php
(in 1944 it was as 94%!!!!)

Yup... of course, people didn't have even close to the equivalent of
$65 billion.


According to the History of the Income Tax in our almanac, the federal
income tax was first enacted in 1862 to support the Union's Civil War
effort. It was eliminated in 1872, revived in 1894, then declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court the following year. In 1913, the
16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent
fixture in the U.S. tax system.

Federal taxes were enacted to finance federal issues like war. How did
we get here? And more interestingly, how did we ever survive before
1862 or between 1872 and 1913?

Who is John Gault?