This series of charts by Antony Davies illustrates the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues.

As Congress and the administration debate the need for tax increases in the debt deal, economist and Mercatus scholar Antony Davies shows that historically, altering the top marginal income tax rate has had no effect on tax revenue as a fraction of GDP. The same is true for the average marginal tax rate, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, the effective corporate tax rate, and the capital gains tax rate. The following series of charts ilustrates these relationships: 

Chart


Chart


Chart


Chart


Chart

Mercatus AI Assistant
Ask questions about this research.
GPT Logo
Mercatus AI Research Assistant
Ask questions about this research. Mercatus Chatbot AI More Details
Suggested Prompts:
Ask us anything. We use OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o base model to answer any question about Mercatus research.