At 04:46 PM 5/7/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote:
On Tue, 7 May 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
At 1:17 PM 5/7/96, Clay Olbon II wrote:
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.
No, it _still_ is true. One bill during one administration does not a major change make.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I sent the text of the law to the list. The position that you take (that increse in inflation can send you into the next tax bracket) is incorrect.
You seem to be forgetting that one of the provisions of (I believe) the 1986 tax act was that capital gains would be indexed for inflation. However, the sleazy politicians only scheduled it (the indexing process) for about 1990 or so, and by 1990 they managed to get that idiot Bush to agree to drop it. I don't know the details, but this is yet another of the reasons I have no qualms about advocating a system for solving the "politician problem" by putting them 6 feet under. Lawyers who profit from an abusive system may disagree, of course. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com