Tax Revenues 2001-2010

David Cay Johnson:

And let's not forget what candidate Bush said about those surpluses that many of us thought were temporary. His campaign endlessly recycled a talking point about surpluses enduring as far as the eye could see. And why would we want to pay down the federal debt when those surpluses could mean more money in voters' pockets?
If the Bush policies in particular, and supply-side in general, produced the promised results or even something reasonably in the ballpark of what was promised, I would be foursquare for them. But the facts show otherwise. I go with the facts as best I know them and change my views when the facts change.
Even when you cherry-pick the numbers and use 2001 as the base year, the results are awful. The individual income tax in 2010 was 27 percent smaller than in 2001, and per capita it was 32 percent smaller; my 2000 analysis in the earlier column showed 30 and 36 percent, respectively.
So what did this blending of tax cuts (Bush), letting bankers and derivatives traders run wild (Bush and Clinton), and cheap money policies from the Ayn Rand acolyte and Bush favorite Alan Greenspan produce?

 

Table 1 shows that even if you start with the recession year 2001, when Bush took office, total tax revenues are down.
Individual income tax revenues returned to even with those in 2001 only once. That was in 2007, but by then the population of the country had grown almost 6 percent. Measured per capita, tax revenues have never come close to 2001 in any year since.
Now, corporate taxes are another matter. They go up and they go down. The data are muddled by the 2003 bonus depreciation rules, which shifted some taxes into future years.
While profits rose and fell with the economy, notice that corporate income tax revenues in 2001 and 2010 were almost the same, and notice how small the 2009 revenues were. More people, bigger markets -- but corporate tax revenues did not keep pace.

The table is worth looking at.  Republican economics is bullshit.