Comment by johsole
7 hours ago
> No, it was enforcement against the ultra-wealthy and corporations
This is how income tax was sold to the American public. When it originally started it really only did effect the top earners, but as the years rolled on and inflation happened it impacted more and more people. The reality is these tools that target only the 'wealthy', if they're successful are used to target everyone.
As the decades went by, people wanted the government to do more and more things and it needed more and more money to do it. Look how many more things the federal government does today versus when income tax was first introduced.
"Inflation brought everyone into the taxable income brackets" has very little to do with it. A significant portion of the population still doesn't make enough income to pay federal tax.
Taxes are unpopular. The government has no reason to "target everyone" because that's an easy way to get voted out.
Why do you think more IRS agents would suddenly start "targeting" people who take the standard deduction (87% of all tax returns [1]) and if they did, why do you think that would matter? This is a nonsense slippery slope.
1 - https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-tax-stats-at-a-...
No, the problem was that wealth become concentrated in capital, and we don't tax wealth. Wealth can be leveraged as power without a taxable event. This is the problem. Capital is capturing the largest piece of the pie as ever, and isn't taxed effectively.
This is also why California is voting on a wealth tax.
Wealth Inequality in America drawn to scale - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-warren-buffett-ca... - December 16th, 2024
- He explained, "I don't pay hardly any payroll taxes. Gov. Romney hardly pays any payroll taxes. Newt Gingrich hardly pays any payroll taxes." Driving the point home, he emphasized the disparity: "Debbie pays lots of payroll taxes."
- Buffett's effective tax rate was 17.4% at the time, largely due to his income coming from capital gains, which are taxed much lower than ordinary wages. Bosanek, like many middle-class Americans, was paying nearly 36% when payroll and income taxes were combined.
- According to a CBS News report, Buffett quickly clarified that he didn't blame Romney for following the law. "I don't blame Gov. Romney for paying the tax rate he paid," Buffett said. "I blame the U.S. Congress."
- The disparity didn't bother Buffett – it drove him to advocate for sweeping changes to the tax code. In an op-ed for The New York Times, he argued for what would become known as the "Buffett Rule," a proposal to implement a minimum 30% tax on incomes exceeding $1 million. President Obama backed the idea, but opposition in Congress kept it from moving forward.