To be even more explicit: the people with the very highest incomes in the 1950s did not have any significant part of their income fall into the top tax bracket.

To be even more explicit: the people with the very highest incomes in the 1950s did not have any significant part of their income fall into the top tax bracket. They did whatever they had to do to not make that happen. They structured it as capital gains and dividends from their businesses, they used deductions for real estate depreciation, etc etc. (To do otherwise would have been insane.) > the 91 percent rate kicked in for each dollar earned over $400,000 – the equivalent of $3,426,776 in constant 2013 dollars So, the top 0.01% (the top 1% of the top 1%) must have made significantly less than $800k ($7 million today) yearly throughout the 1950s in order to pay around 50% total on average each year. I'm sure _some_ of them were executives that would have made a million or two in salary, if the top income bracket was much lower. But instead they had most of their salary turned into benefits and shares or whatever/however it would not be classified "income", and they were successful at this.