Taxes are going up, up, up! Free housing, free healthcare, free food, free cash, and free obamaphones aren’t really free. Somebody has to pay, and that’s you (unless you’re one of the 100 million people getting the free shit). Thank goodness for the IRS, terrorizing citizens and keeping the free shit “free” for 100 years.
IRS to Celebrate a Century of Progressive Redistribution
February 2013 marks the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, authorizing the collection of a national income tax and the creation of the Internal Revenue Service. As a duly self-appointed member of the Inner Circle of the Party, I hereby issue an executive order proclaiming 2013 as
In celebration of this momentous milestone, let’s take a trip back to the thrilling and heady days of yesteryear and see just how far we have come in the science of Progressive Wealth Redistribution.
In 1913, anyone making over $3,000 per year was required to file a federal income tax return. This was the equivalent of slightly more than $68,000 in 2011 dollars. Currently, anyone making more than $9,500 per year is required to file a return with the IRS.
Even in 1913 the government was mindful of making the evil rich pay their fair share, which has to be a bigger share than anyone else. What they lacked was the audacity of hope in their demands. Let’s take a quick look at the 1913 tax tables included on the venerable Form 1040
Adjusted Gross Income……………………………………..Per cent Tax Due
$0 – $20,000………………………………………………………………….1%
$20,000 – $50,000……………………………………………………………1%
$50,000 – $75,000……………………………………………………………2%
$75,000 – $100,000………………………………………………………….3%
$100,000 – $250,000…………………………………………………………4%
$250,000 – $500,000…………………………………………………………5%
$500,000 and up………………………………………………………………6%
Thus, while a person who earned $50,000 in 1913 owed the federal government $500 in taxes, the person who earned $75,000 in 1913 owed $1,000. If the taxpayer was truly greedy and stole $100,000 from the working class in 1913, he had to pay $1,750 in taxes, while a true enemy of the people earning $250,000 was forced to redistribute $6,000 of his ill-gotten gains to the federal government. And for those “captains of industry,” as the arch-imperialists used to call themselves, men who earned $500,000 per year, they had to pony up $20,250 in taxes.
It was a good start, but before we get too dizzy with success here, we must realize that the percentages involved were truly minuscule. A person earning $100,000 paid only 1.75% in taxes. The millionaires and billionaires who earned $250,000 in a year paid but 3.1%, and the blood-drinking corporate fat-cats earning a cool half million bucks only turned over 4.05% of their earnings for redistribution.
This is something about which we can be proud in this new era of progressive redistribution: although the rich are still not paying their fair share, we are making progressive progress in forcing them to return a higher percentage of the money they have stolen from the people. Let’s just do a little conceited comparison of 1913 rates to 2012 rates:
Taxable Income………………..1913 tax (per cent rate)………………..2012 tax (per cent rate)
$100,000………………………..$1,750 (1.75%)………………………….$21,454 (21.45%)
$250,000…………………………$7,750 (3.1%)…………………………..$67,029 (26.81%)
$500,000…………………………$20,250 (4.05%)……………………….$151,761 (30.35%)
While it does warm my heart to realize that a person earning $100,000 today is paying well over ten times the tax rate as a person earning the same amount a century ago, we can’t say the same for the person earning a half million dollars a year, and in any case, these evil rich people are not paying their fair share even at these rates.
One thing we can be proud of, even in the light of these still obviously far too light tax burdens, is the standard deduction rate. In 1913, the personal exemption on a tax return for a person filing single was $3,000. In 2012, that standard deduction is $5,950. Here is somewhere we have truly held the line, dear comrades. Remember, $3,000 in 1913 was the equivalent of a bit more than $68,000 in 2011 dollars. For the standard deduction to remain on par with 1913, we would have to allow tax filers an exemption of over $130,000! Yet we keep them content by showing our largess in allowing them to exempt a mere $5,950.
So let’s raise a cup of vegan soy latte in toast of a century of progressive expansion of the Internal Revenue Service and the coercive redistribution of wealth. Be a patriot and pay those taxes, and vote for those candidates who see their duty to raise taxes to an even more equal rate.
Remember Comrades: The Obamaphone does not pay for itself!
Stucky says:
The IRS is going to hire 10,000 new agents to enforce ObamaCare.
This is what they will look like.
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23rd February 2013 at 2:03 pm
Stucky says:
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23rd February 2013 at 2:06 pm
Stucky says:
New IRS Obamacare agents in black neighborhoods
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23rd February 2013 at 2:15 pm
Zarathustra says:
The supreme court ruled (Brushaber vs Union Pacific RR Co., 1916) that the 13th amendment conferred no new powers to the federal government. To make a long story short, it ruled that the Income tax was an excise and applied to unearned income only. From 1914 until 1942, nobody filed returns or paid income taxes on wages or commissions. This practice was instituted by the emergency “Victory Tax Act of 1942), which was supposed to sunset in 1944. A factoid is that the practice of income tax withholding was the brainchild of Milton Friedman. Nice going, Milt.
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23rd February 2013 at 2:31 pm
AWD says:
Thanks Stuck
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23rd February 2013 at 7:21 pm
taxSlave says:
The income tax is illegal and immoral. Pay up comrade, it is your duty.
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23rd February 2013 at 7:54 pm
AWD says:
We’ll be seeing tax rates approaching 70% very soon. (like in socialist France now). The reason? entitlements
America’s Tragic Future In One Parabolic Chart
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/23/2013
When it comes to forecasting the long-term trajectory of the US economy, things usually get very fuzzy some time after 2020 because, as even the most hardened optimists, the “impartial” Congressional Budget Office have recently admitted, America has at best 3-4 years before everything falls apart due to the unsustainable demographic crunch that will wallop the US entitlement state as demographics suddenly becomes a four letter word. Beyond that, not even the CBO dares to plot a straight line as to what happens should America not get its fiscal house in order.
Which is why were were very surprised to see none other than Morgan Stanley’s David Greenlaw and Deutsche Bank’s David Hooper release a paper (whose views do “not necessarily reflect those of the institutions with which they are affiliated”) titled “Crunch Time: Fiscal Crises and the Role of Monetary Policy” which is a must read for everyone interested in what very likely will happen to the US as ever more power is handed over by the country’s now terminally malfunctioning fiscal and legislative apparatus to the monetary policy vehicle controlled by the US financial oligarchy.
Since we know that most readers are pressed for time, we will cut to the chase: the following chart shows what according to the authors’ own simulation of the US economy, and not that of the CBO, rates on the 10 Year will look like through 2037. The second chart shows what US debt-to-GDP will be for the next two and a half decades.
The charts need no commentary. Parabola #1 showing the yield on the 10 Year under the authors’ simulation:
And Parabola #2 showing total US debt/GDP:
Putting some numbers to the forecast by Greenlaw and Hooper, and assuming a 1.5% CAGR for GDP, which in the new structurally slower normal is quite generous, we get $23 trillion in US GDP by 2037, $70 trillion in debt, and a blended cash interest expense that is over 75% of total GDP.
We also get the Fed monetizing all of it.
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23rd February 2013 at 8:12 pm
nof says:
The NAME “IRS” was created in 1913. The actual agency was formed in 1862 with the implementation of the original income tax under Lincoln to fight the civil war.
The 16th amendment DID NOT lead to the taxing of our pay for working. The Federal Reserve and the Banks are solely responsible for that. The Gov did not need the 16th amendment to tax our pay IF paid in certain mediums.
The 16th allowed the gov to tax income DERIVED (or severed/separated) from property sources. Examples include rent, interest, capital gains, and the gain derived from hiring at least one employee.
We will never fix the system without a basic knowledge of how it works on a fundamental level.
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23rd February 2013 at 8:17 pm
eugend66 says:
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23rd February 2013 at 3:20 am