Starting The Day Off Thinking About Taxes
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
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Found this*, a 40k-50k tax bill in 1924 means a salary of somewhat under 100K to about 150k in those dollars, and 1.2-1.8 million in today’s dollars.
(eta – also I’m pretty sure my marginal rate calculation is off, so the salary numbers are a hair lower)
*didn’t double check the numbers, source definitely has an agenda, though it doesn’t at all mean he’s wrongReport
The paper discussed how much various people paid in taxes?Report
My county’s public library allows access to the NYT & WaPo online archives with a borrower account. Here’s something I found; I’m trying to link to it from outside any paywalls, but I don’t how how much you can see.Report
Huh.
I don’t know if that’s a horrible thing that I’m glad we don’t do anymore or a terrific thing that we need to bring back.Report
Here’s another one (1926)
Report
Skimming some of the archives on that same search results page, one criticism against the publishing the tax lists was that it was a ready made list of people with money so that scam artists could more easily target those people in various confidence schemes.Report
“Does the fact that something *MIGHT* happen really outweigh the need of the public to know?” would be, I imagine, the ready-made counter-argument.
Because, at the end of the day, the fundamental argument is about privacy and whether people should have it.Report
It wasn’t just theoretical; the tax list was apparently a prospective client cold call list for every stock market manipulator of the twenties.Report
All thing being equal, wouldn’t we _rather_ scam artists go after the wealthy than the poor?
If we assume that the scam artists are going to continue to work regardless of whether they have a good list or not, surely the wealthy can afford the losses better.Report
When I worked for the state as an exempt employee (salaried rather than hourly, not subject to overtime limits) my salary was published annually. Or at least something approximating my salary — I don’t think the published figure was ever right.Report