Two thoughts on this:
  • it's not taught in school but until 1913 personal income tax didn't exist. That was the period when the bulk of American wealth was created.
  • In my own medium sized software company with 10 employees, when I knew that it was basically doomed due to the competitive landscape, rather than extract the money and invest in something else, I chose to almost run it into the ground by paying these employees simply to avoid paying ordinary income tax at the moment of extraction of the money.
1913 was a significant year for American 🇺🇸 history
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That's a very interesting note. So, your employees all worked more hours, because you had a high income tax rate. That would not have occurred to me.
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Which overall decreased productivity because they were doing essentially useless work, instead of the extracted money being invested in a newer venture.
Regulations produced by relatively simple centralized systems tend to have unintended consequences, reducing complexity necessary for developing advanced society.
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Good point. It didn't help your fat cat corporate profits. I'm assuming it actually decreased the total income tax paid, as well, since your marginal rate would have likely been higher than theirs.
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