Tax rates past and present

A recent letter to the editor railing about our national debt compared tax rates between today’s top rate of 37% and the rate in the 1950s of 90%. It then states that the actual tax rate paid by today’s wealthy is under 4%.

This rate was arrived at not by using the actual income received in a year. It was arrived at by using a contrived formula using the unrealized capital gains from assets that appreciated but were not sold. In other words, if you bought a home in 2015 for $250,000, and today it is worth $500,000, this bogus analysis would claim you made an additional $250,000 upon which you paid no income tax. If you had to pay the tax on this unrealized income you would almost certainly have to sell the home to pay the tax.

As noted the tax rate in the ‘50s was about 90 percent. The Left loves to point this out in their never-ending “fair share” mantra. But if you examine what the actual rate paid was in both the ‘50s and today, it’s almost identical. The top 0.1% (super rich) paid an average of 21% of their income in the ‘50s. In 2014, the top 0.1% paid 20.7% of the income they actually received.

While it is true that statistics don’t lie, the important point to remember is they can be manipulated by people with subjective agendas to mislead others. These statistics came from taxfoundation.org.

Hal Dixon

Spokane