Tuesday, December 02, 2008

High and low federal tax rates historically

Here's another graph showing the highest (blue) and the lowest (red) federal tax rates, historically. I've generated this from the same data as my previous post.

A few things strike me. 1) We really all sacrificed to pay for WWII; 2) tax policy in Reagan's second term was particularly ruthless, with the raising of the bottom-most rate and lowering of the top-most rates, the only time in tax history that that has been done; and 3) tax rates since Reagan have been closer to pre-New-Deal rates than to post New-Deal rates.

Update: I should specify that this is all about income tax rates.

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