Present Law and Historical Overview of the Federal Tax System

The Senate Committee on Finance has scheduled a public hearing on December 2, 2010, on “Tax Reform: Historical Trends in Income and Revenue.” This document,1 prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, provides a summary of the Federal tax system, briefly describes its historical development over the period of time beginning in 1975, and provides an appendix of selected historical data on Federal tax rates, Federal tax receipts, components of adjusted gross income, and other features of the Federal tax system. The current Federal tax system has four main elements: (1) an income tax on individuals and corporations (which consist of both a “regular” income tax and an alternative minimum tax); (2) payroll taxes on wages (and corresponding taxes on self-employment income); (3) estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, and (4) excise taxes on selected goods and services.