First off, the largest tax increase in recent history was in 1968 under Democrat Lyndon Johnson, at 1.74% of the GDP. The tax increase Shotgunjones attributed to Bush 41 actually came under Reagan in 1982, but it followed a massive Reagan tax cut in 1981, so the net effect was a small tax decrease.
Lying Democrats love to point out the 1982 increase but somehow forget to mention the even larger 1981 decrease. Right King?
Next largest as a percentage of GDP came in 1993 under Bill Clinton. This was followed by the 1990 Bush 41 tax increase where Democrats convinced him to violate his "Read my lips... no new taxes." pledge. Then in a wonderful display of bipartisanship, they drove the spike into his heart.
I wonder why Republicans aren't smart enough to take a page from the Democrat playbook and constantly criticize Obama for violating his own pledge to not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year. Here's a video of Obama telling that Lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUiiIrZpUCUThe next largest tax increase was Jimmy Carter's 1980 "Oil Windfall Profits Tax" which of course got passed on to the consumer. Seems like most of our massive tax increases came from Democrats or were encouraged by Democrats. What can we learn from this as 2016 approaches?
The all time largest tax increase in U.S. History was the Revenue Act of 1942 which was used to finance WWII expenditures, and was 5.04% of GDP.
The Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare is right up there in terms of massive tax increases, but unless it is changed or repealed, it will almost certainly move into first place as the largest tax increase of all time.
The annual deductible for Bronze ObamaCare plans is actually $10,400 per year, and $6000 for the Silver plans. This is in addition to the monthly premiums. For a working person on minimum wage and working an average of 28 hours per week, getting sick while covered under a Bronze plan could eat up virtually 100% of their income, and even a Silver plan would leave very little for food and rent. Fewer folks will actually go bankrupt only because healthy young people who seldom get sick are now forced to subsidize the rest through either insurance premiums or fines and penalties. But the smoke and mirrors game was always meant mostly to redistribute wealth and benefits to the non-working class. The basic problem of medical costs rising much faster than inflation has not been addressed as evidenced by Shotgunjones' one year 17% premium increase.
