I am a huge fan of high taxes (for the rich), and a common argument I hear against it is “If taxes are too high, nobody will open businesses! Why should someone do a bunch of work if they can’t reap the rewards?”. And I guess it sounds right intuitively, but it’s also factually dead wrong. Tons of companies got started when tax rates were way higher than they are today. In this blog post I’ll combine some data from various sources into a big table which shows the highest marginal tax rates when various companies got started.

In this post I’ll use personal income tax rates, not corporate tax rates. I’m doing this because the usual argument against high taxes is that Sam Walton (or whoever) wouldn’t have started his business if he thought it couldn’t make him personally rich. Nobody starts a business so that their corporate entity can get rich while they personally don’t get rich. So personal income tax rates make sense for this context, and I’ll pull them from here. I’ll show data starting in the 1930’s (when FDR raised taxes as part of the New Deal) and ending in 1986 (after 1986 Reagan lowered taxes to rates similar to what we have today).

The founding dates from companies will mostly come from Wikipedia. And whereever possible I’ll try to highlight companies that conservatives love, because that will make them more big mad.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of companies which were started when, according to the conservative argument, nobody would ever start companies:

Year Tax Rate Company
1986 50% Office Depot
1985 50% Qualcomm
1984 50% Dell
1983 50% Costco
1982 50% Adobe
1981 70% Guess (fashion)
1980 70% Dish Network
1979 70% Seagate Technology
1978 70% Home Depot
1977 70% Oracle
1976 70% Apple Computer
1975 70% Microsoft
1974 70% Fantastic Sams
1973 70% Patagonia
1972 70% Hobby Lobby
1971 70% Starbucks
1970 70% Western Digital
1969 70% Cracker Barrel
1968 70% Intel
1967 70% Ralph Lauren
1966 70% Best Buy
1965 70% Petco
1964 77% Nike
1963 91% CVS Pharmacy
1962 91% Taco Bell
1961 91% JB Hunt (trucking / freight)
1960 91% Tower Records
1959 91% Family Dollar
1958 91% Pizza Hut
1957 91% Honey Baked Ham
1956 91% Marshalls
1955 91% McDonalds
1954 91% Commodore Computer
1953 92% World Wrestling Entertainment
1952 92% Holiday Inn
1951 91% Texas Instruments
1950 91% Sun Studio
1949 91% Pottery Barn
1948 91% NASCAR
1947 91% J Crew
1946 91% Chik-fil-a
1945 94% Wal Mart
1944 94% Parsons Corp (military contractor)
1943 88% Jo-Ann Stores
1942 88% Johnson Publishing
1941 81% Coach (leather goods)
1940 79% Koch Industries
1939 79% Dollar General
1938 79% REI
1937 79% Krispy Kreme
1936 79% GEICO
1935 63% Tyson Foods
1934 63% Hillshire Farm
1933 63% EJ Gallow Winery
1932 63% Advance Auto Parts