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Taxes and The Twilight Zone

Writer's picture: henryfarleyjohnsonhenryfarleyjohnson

As the debate rages on about how much to tax the country's highest earners (you can probably guess which side I'm on), I rewatched the 1960 Twilight Zone episode "The Man in the Bottle." A struggling antique shop owner is visited by a genie and offered three wishes. But these wishes inevitably backfire, leaving the shop owner worse than where he started.


The link to tax rates? The protagonist's second wish is for one million dollars, seemingly the largest amount of money anyone could even imagine in 1960. But, in a gnarly twist, the IRS sends a collector to the shop to stick the man with a federal income tax bill of $907,000. Was this actually possible?


Sure enough, in 1960, the marginal tax rate for a married couple making over $400,000 was 91%. The show mixes up marginal and effective tax rates, but even so, it reminds us just how much our tax brackets have changed since the episode aired. (The man's third wish also backfires and, as you probably assumed, he turns himself into Hitler.)


Today, that top marginal rate is just 37%. The protagonist would be forced to pay roughly $167,000 plus 37% on every dollar over $622,050. Online tax calculators tell me this comes out to just under $298,000 in taxes. Tough to part with, but certainly nothing worth turning yourself into Hitler over.


P.S. I know at least one of you is an accountant, so let me know if I mixed anything up here.


P.P.S. Some college kids shelve books at the school library. Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling made his money elsewhere:


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