I'm looking for a history of U.S. tax rates from colonial days into
the present.  I want to know the total tax rate and total tax amount
paid at each quartile or quintile, and at the top 10%, top 5% and top
2% of earners for these time periods.  The total tax should include
income tax, payroll tax, sales tax, property tax, tariffs,
miscellaneous "excise" taxes and war taxes, state taxes,
inheritance/estate tax and other relevant taxes and should be broken
out by category (I understand some may be hard to come by, especially
since we've got 50 states with inconsistent policies to deal with --
if they're just way too hard to find or even *average* please state in
your answer)  The data from the colonial period may have less detail
as its somewhat less important and may be harder to come by.   The
data for the modern period should have increasing resolution as we get
closet to present day, so 5-yearly resolution is OK in 1960s, but 1
yearly resolution for anything past 1980.   A chart and/or table will
be best and I will pay a tip for outstanding information.  Links in
the answer are valuable but links to clearly idealogical organization
like the heritage institute must be considered with a grain of salt.  
Additionally a chart indicating income distribution amount the top 1%,
5%, 10% and each quintile for the same time period and resolution in
time.  The ultimate information I am looking for is how total taxation
has varied with time/politics and how income distribution has followed
those trends, but I want to see how that tax is distributed among
payroll/income/tariffs.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 04 Apr 2005 07:04 PDT

archier-ga,

Some of the information you're looking for will be available at these
two links -- at least for the past few decades:


http://www.taxfoundation.org/statelocal.html
Comparing State and Local Tax Burdens Across the Nation



http://www.truthandpolitics.org/tax-burden-pechman.php
Total Tax Burden, 1966--1985


I rather doubt that there is a ready-made source for the
deeply-detailed sort of historical information you're looking for,
particularly when spread out across so many states, and for different
tax brackets, and across hundreds of years.

Is there a way to consolidate your question, so that a researcher
could have a reasonable chance of providing you an answer?

Let me know what you think.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by archier-ga on 04 Apr 2005 12:21 PDT

Hi pafalafa

I don't know if there is a ready made source for this either,
especially on the internet, I'm hoping that a couple of sources could
be consolidated by a researcher.   I don't know if my price is
appropriate but I had seen so many $2 questions responded to that I
thought it was reaonsable.

The early time periods are not as important as the later time periods,
but need at least some information.   The state tax rates are not as
important as the federal, but I am interested in total taxation, which
has to include non-federal taxes within a reasonable margin of error,
and of course the taxes that existed before the income tax.


I googled around myself but most of the material is modern, anecdotal
in nature, and/or presents a biased story.   The treasury department
has a decent history of the income tax but it doesn't tell the story
of the other, non-income based taxes or give what the actual brackets
are.   I saw numerous references to increasing, and then lowering the
top bracket but without what the brackets correspond to in terms of
dollars and income %ile, the information is hard to understand.

Here's a start: it will get you 30 years of detail --

Fraser Institute
"Economic Freedom of the World, 2004"
http://www.freetheworld.com/release.html

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA