Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes

At 5:34 PM 5/6/96, Timothy C. May wrote:

Also, the effect of inflation has been to inflate salaries and thus inflate people into higher tax brackets, even when their "real wages" have not gone up.

This used to be true. A bill passed during the Reagan administration indexed the brackets to inflation to remedy this situation. I don't know how succesful the bill was in eliminating "bracket creep", but that was the stated purpose.

If we ever get really bad inflation again (>10% per year, as we had in the late 70s, early 90s), or, God forbid, hyper-inflation, the tax system will likely not survive in anything near its current form.

Hopefully the system won't survive no matter what the inflation rate is. Clay