IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v55y1995i02p285-303_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s

Author

Listed:
  • Smiley, Gene
  • Keehn, Richard H.

Abstract

During the 1920s, federal personal income tax rates, which had been dramatically increased during World War I, were sharply reduced. These tax rate cuts have often been cited as an example of a successful supply-side policy, but they have also been criticized as policies designed primarily to benefit the wealthy. We argue that a primary motive for the tax cuts of the 1920s was the desire to reduce the tax avoidance by wealthier individuals that occurred as a result of the previous tax rate increases and that the tax cuts enacted did reduce tax avoidance.

Suggested Citation

  • Smiley, Gene & Keehn, Richard H., 1995. "Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 285-303, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:55:y:1995:i:02:p:285-303_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700041061/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Torregrosa Hetland, Sara & Sabaté, Oriol, 2021. "Income Taxes and Redistribution in the Early Twentieth Century," Lund Papers in Economic History 224, Lund University, Department of Economic History, revised 05 Sep 2022.
    2. Matthew Fisher-Post, 2020. "Examining the Great Leveling: New Evidence on Midcentury American Inequality," PSE Working Papers hal-02876981, HAL.
    3. Matthew Fisher-Post, 2020. "Examining the Great Leveling: New Evidence on Midcentury American Inequality," Working Papers hal-02876981, HAL.
    4. O'Sullivan, Mary, 2019. "Past meets present in policymaking: The Federal Reserve and the U.S. money market, 1913-1929," Working Papers unige:121790, University of Geneva, Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History.
    5. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2014. "The Incentive Effects of Marginal Tax Rates: Evidence from the Interwar Era," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 242-281, August.
    6. Matthew Fisher-Post, 2020. "Examining the Great Leveling: New Evidence on Midcentury American Inequality," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876981, HAL.
    7. Farquet, Christophe & Leimgruber, Matthieu, 2016. "Explaining the failure of international tax regulations throughout the 20th century. Offshore Markets, Swiss Tax Haven's Diplomacy and Fiscal Debates in International Organizations, From the League of," Working Papers unige:88348, University of Geneva, Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:55:y:1995:i:02:p:285-303_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.