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18 Tax Foundation's Tax Review 1 (1957)

handle is hein.tera/tafoutaxt0020 and id is 1 raw text is: TAX FOUNDATION'S JANUARY 1957, Vol XIX, No. I How Progressive Can We Get! By Roswell Magill Pri'silent, Tax Fontdation THE Federal income tax law has a greater impact today upon the personal life of every Amer- ican and upon the form of every business transaction than any other law on the statute books. Reflect for a moment upon the effect the income tax law has had on you and upon your job or your business during 1956. Does any other statute compare with it in significance'? Yet current Congressional discussion of the tax laws seems curiously uninspired and halting. It seems to be limited to attractive non-essentials like loop- holes and the excise tax on bags for golf shoes; and to avoid any consideration of such essentials as tax reduction; the force the tax law is asserting day after day in reducing and denying the liberties of citizens to spend their own earnings as This Iss they see fit; and in compelling Present Congr' business to adopt forms and loopholes and shorteomlings of tli procedures for tax reasons, s to divert a which run counter to other damental weakness holes are mnerely well-established governmental Wys tie basic tro and business policies. income tax rates Loopholes are important, of course; indeed they are inevitable when income tax rates reach the present very high plateau. Should we be more concerned, however, with the trickle of revenue that may escape through in- genious little schemes (that Congress has tried to stop for 25 years), than with the fairly uniform agreement that income tax rates are much too high, both at the bottom and at the top of the rate scale; that high rates are the direct cause of the invention and utilization of loopholes; that the tax law is much too complicated and obscure; and that many of its provisions operate to defeat the very iie in Brief essionil concern over other relatively minor e U. S. iicoic tax law ention from more fun- es. Asserting that loop. a sympltoin, Mr. Magill tile is that individual are too high ini all brackets, but especially in the tipper in- come brackets. Noting that the Amterican economy needs more people trying to answer the $64,000 question, he suggests that a feasible accomplislunent in 1957 would be reduction of the inaximnim rate to 50 percent. Mr. Magill also opposes current efforts to make the corporate in- come tax more progressive, citing the ad. verse effect on the small stockholder and the fact that its touted benefits would in reality be limited to a small segment of small business. economic development that other government agencies seek to foster. These charges are too seri- ous to rest on generalities. Let's look at the record. What are the main tax sub- jects with which an intelligent citizen or businessman is con- cerned today? 1. Nearly all of us would put the too high income tax rates on individuals at the top of the list. They certainly keep us from spending our earnings or ordering our lives as we wish. 2. Thoughtful businessmen Copyright 1957 by Tax Foundation, Inc., 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 20, N. Y. Material maY be re-used with proper credit, without specific request. I

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