Post-1913 income tax exempted all but a tiny fraction of Americans

Evidence

But while the department tasked with carrying out the new Revenue Act worked to diminish its black employees, it wasn’t thinking of black Americans as taxpayers—a policy rooted in prejudice that nonetheless worked to black Americans’ advantage. The system had been designed by whites (in Congress) to tax certain (working-class) white taxpayers less, and other (wealthy) white taxpayers more. Under the new law, only those who earned more than 3,000 as individuals, or 4,000 for a husband living with a stay-at-home spouse, were required to pay federal income tax. Between 1918 and 1932, this amounted to an average of 5.6 percent of Americans paying federal income tax each year. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 46

Categorization

• QUESTION: The 3,000/4,000 threshold and how these compare to today’s thresholds, adjusted for income share, warrants chasing.