Quote:
Originally Posted by 12clicks
Ah yes, the uneducated "taxes used to be higher" argument, poorly made. There was no such thing as computerized records, record sharing, etc. there were VERY few IRS agents. The rich paid the government what they felt like.
There was no way to track their incomes.
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My point wasn't to justify high taxes on the wealthy. It was to explain in the history of our country taxes were raised to very high percentages to pay for wars. It's only recently that it seems the war mindset (not paying your bills) has changed. The main point I was trying to make based on this thread was to highlight that there wasn't some mass exodus of wealthy Americans fleeing the country pre-Reagan.
"By 1967, all business and personal tax returns were handled by computer systems, and by the late 1960s, the IRS had developed a computerized method for selecting tax returns to be examined. "
I like the idea of a flat tax too, but something like Hong Kong has done. I don't believe in double taxation, even in what we refer to it at the corporation level.
So, I just don't believe that there's going to some mass exodus of the super wealthy in America.