What is your effective tax rate now versus years past? Ritchie King made an interactive to show you.
Having not been alive in the ’50s or ’60s, let alone filing taxes, I was struck by the high top income tax rate—exactly double the highest tax rate today. It made me wonder: what would my income tax be if I had earned the equivalent of what I earn now several decades ago—or even in 1913, when the current federal income tax program was first introduced? What would the history of income taxes look like through the collective eyes of people in my exact financial situation over the past 100 years?
Just enter your taxable income and filing status, and you get a time series of what your tax rate would’ve been years ago. It’s kind of fun to mouse right to left to see your inflation-adjusted income.
See also the New York Times piece from last month, which makes for an interesting contrast. Similar data was used, but the views are quite different.
“your tax rate”? Not mine. Forgot that you have readers on other continents than America?
We did a similar project to this at USA TODAY a few years back: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/tax-rates-spending.htm
Nathan, I ran across a few interesting visualizations a while back when I was looking at visualization contests. These visualizations in particular are based around taxes and offers an interesting parallel to your findings (though not focused on history).
http://datavizchallenge.org/