Sunday, July 08, 2012

Now's A Great Time To Be A Wealthy American

Paul Krugman has a great article on the history of U.S. tax rates over the past 50 years. While most Americans have experienced relatively small changes in their tax bracket percentage over the half-century, the results for Americans in the top 0.01% of incomes look like this:

1960: 71.4%
1970: 74.6%
1980: 59.3%
1990: 35.4%
2000: 40.8%
2004: 34.7%

Now, even an income tax-lover like me thinks any rate greater than 50% is excessive. However, when I hear Conservatives in the U.S. complaining that taxes on the wealthy right now are "obscene," "at an all-time high" or any of the other rubbish they spew, I just laugh. Imagine if our top tax rate in Canada at the moment was 34.7%!

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