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Tax and Economic

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Submitted By huizhao
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The Trend of U.S. Tax System
The art of taxation was in the “plucking the goose so as to obtain the largest amount of the feathers with the least possible amount of hissing”, said by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the seventeenth-century French finance minister. (Miller) From the historic perspective, current government of United States has developed a very efficient tax system of plucking its private–sector goose. While it seems this tax system indeed obtain the largest amount of the feathers, but the amount of hissing is growing. Due to a drop in individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, and estate taxes combining with the substantially change in the composition of top incomes, the U.S. tax system has became less progressive.
According to the relationship between tax base and tax rate. There are three branches of tax system in the United States: proportional taxation, progressive taxation, and regressive taxation. Progressive taxation and regressive taxation are based on the proportional taxation, in which tax rate is fixed weather the taxable base amount increases or decreases. Based on the proportional taxation system, the progressive taxation is the one in which the tax rate increases as the taxable base amount increases, and the regressive taxation is opposite. Under those three taxation systems, there are kinds of taxes, primary including individual income tax, corporate income tax, estate and gift tax, and payroll tax. From the historic perspective, the overall U.S. federal tax system has always been progressive, though the progressivity has declined over the past decades. Three main changes cause this trend: first, a dramatic reduction in top marginal individual income tax rates, and substantial increase in payroll tax rates; second, a great fall in corporate income taxes and less taxes burden fallen in estate and gift taxes; last, the composition of top

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