No Tax On Overtime Was A 90 Billion Dollar Reverse Wealth Transfer
No Tax On Overtime Was A 90 Billion Dollar Reverse Wealth Transfer By Robert Korczynski In 1913 the United States established the Federal Reserve and passed the Revenue Act to introduce Federal Income Taxes. The Federal Reserve was created as a permanent central bank, but the income tax was sold as a temporary "soak the rich" measure that would only target the top 1% of earners. The Revenue Act of 1913 originally provided $3,000 exemptions for single filers and $4,000 for married couples. Adjusted for inflation, that equates to at least $90,000 to $120,000 in tax-free income, so in reality 97% of all Americans paid zero federal income tax at first. But when the government needed to fund World War I, it passed the War Revenue Act of 1917 which slashed exemptions for single filers to $1,000 and married couples to $2,000, dragging millions of working-class Americans into a permanent federal tax net that was never dismantled after the war, and over the years the federal governme...