nfitz
Superstar
Tell me then - how would electing Callaghan have saved the industrial capacity that the UK has shed since 1979?Obviously the enrichment of the investment bankers of the City was the right trade off for 35 years of lost industrial capacity.
Tell me when Canada had an 80% marginal tax rate on employment income?
An interesting quote - but it doesn't seem quite accurate. According to http://www.fcf-ctf.ca/ctfweb/Documents/PDF/1995ctj/1995CTJ5_02_Smith.pdf it was 59.93% not 80% on $60,000 (worth about $350,000 in 2015$) in 1972. I am surprised to see that in 1972 it was 60% on $60,000 ... but up to 80% on $400,000 (about $2.3 million in 2015$). So there were some pretty high taxes back in 1971 on the super rich - but not as high as the UK for employment income. On the other hands, on capital gains, the peak 1972 tax rate was only 30%; in 1971 it was 0%! And even in 1971, dividends were only taxed at 80% at the highest rate - not the 98% that existed in the UK.Here's one reference:In 1972, the top personal tax rate was close to 70%, when taxable income reached $60,000. Today, the combined top personal tax rate is between 39% and 48% (depending on the province) when taxable income reaches about $128,000. While the top personal tax rate has decreased noticeably, the expansion of the tax brackets has been far below inflation.
So the answer is, 1971. I guess Thatcher was copying Trudeau!
Thanks for the references. I vaguely remember the 1972 tax reforms being significant in the 1970s. But I hadn't realized that Trudeau had been so aggressive at reducing tax rates (though to be fair, the changes were 10 years in the making, starting with the Carter Commission).