system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Were taxes at the start of the 20th century really 90%? How such a thing even possible?
gpt
When you pay a 90% tax rate, you don't actually pay 90% of your income. You pay in brackets.

So, for example, if the tax rates are 30%, 40%, 50%, and 60% at up to 30k, 60k, 100k, and up, then someone making $300,000 a year would pay 30% of 30k, 40% of 30k, 50% of 40k, then 60% of 200k, or $161k, or only actually 54%, not the full 60%.

The 90% rate was for an amount of money so high that even the people who paid it didn't actually pay anywhere near that amount. Though, it should be noted, taxes today are still the lowest that they have been in over a hundred years, and have been cut by every other president for the past half century.