Combined Federal Marginal Tax Rates on Family of Four

View fullsize

Often in visualizations of taxes, including mine, the focus is on the highest rate on the highest incomes. The Tax Policy Center calculated the combined federal tax rate on a median income family. To compare I have included the combined tax rate for a family with twice the median income.

The rate is the marginal combined Federal Income and Social Security and Medicare (FICA) Employee and Employer Tax Rates. I think of this rate as for a self-employed earner since they have to pay both employer and employee taxes themselves.

Keep in mind the Tax Policy Center calculates these rates for:

• 4 person family including a married couple with one earner

• Itemized deductions are assumed to equal 23 percent of income through 1986 and 18 percent of income thereafter

Data: Historical Combined Income and Employee Tax Rates for a Family of Four, also including Employer Tax Rates

Voting in 2016 US Presidential Election

View fullsize

I was inspired to make this visualization with the upcoming Inauguration and by the Market for Labor visualization, I made for my Income book. 

I took the same approach with this visualization, using the data from the Cook Political Report which tallied popular votes cast for president and the US population and the % of children data from the US Census Bureau Quickfacts page. 

Federal Revenue and Top Tax Rates

What caught my attention with this Federal revenue dataset was the reversal of the social insurance taxes and the corporate taxes in their relative importance to the Federal government. So what are the tax rates? I revisited my tax poster from a few years ago to make a companion graph about the highest tax rates but that is not the whole story. What is missing is who (and how many) actually paid these top rates. BTW, the individual and corporate rates are the top marginal rate, while the Social Insurance and Retirement tax is capped beyond which you don't pay any additional taxes (it was $118,500 in 2015).

Data from Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 2.3, and from Tax Policy Center statistics and their tax fact site.

BTW, if you pledge on Patreon you will get access to high-resolution files and a sneak peek at my work.

Land's Share of Home Prices | Long-term Interest Rate

View fullsize

Data Notes: Data is from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy can be found here: CSW-based price index: aggregate land data, quarterly, 1975:1-2016:1. I took the "Aggregate market value of residential land" and calculated the percentage of the "Aggregate market value of homes" and plotted it yearly. Interest rates are from MeasuringWorth.com  

BTW, if you pledge on Patreon you will get access to high-resolution files and a sneek peek at my work .

Land's Share of US Home Prices

View fullsize

Data Notes: I am using a new data set from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for this graph data can be found here: CSW-based price index: aggregate land data, quarterly, 1975:1-2016:1. I took the "Aggregate market value of residential land" and calculated the percentage of the "Aggregate market value of homes" and plotted it yearly, then compared it to the Real Housing. Price Index I have used in previous graphs from Robert Shiller's dataset. 

BTW, if you pledge on Patreon you will get access to high-resolution files and a sneaek peek at my work .