Quote: Originally Posted By antonsirius on 5/28/2010Plus, any statement of Reagan's from the early '80s talking about taxes is basically irrelevant to the current state of things. Income tax has been virtually unchanged since the end of Reagan's second term, as has the overall tax burden. If anything, it's lower now than it was when Reagan office.
If you're suggesting that taxes are a huge problem today, then you're suggesting that Reagan himself was wrong about what an appropriate tax burden should be -- in which case, it's kind of silly to quote him on the issue
If you are just looking at income tax, here are the numbers (generally speaking)
1986
15%/28%/33%/28%
2010
10%/15%/25%/28%/33%/35%
If I am reading it right, 86 15%, became a split of 10% and 15% and 33% became a split between 28% and 33%. So essentially, yes.
However, Reagan was talking about 1980 when times were as bad as they are now. He cut the taxes 25% across the board of the
24?! tax brackets that existed back in 1981.
Also Reagan increased the gas tax to 9 cents a gallon. Now it is at 18.4 cents a gallon.
It is a lot of the extra fees and taxes that gets me riled up.