It's easy enough to look up federal tax revenues during that period and see they were indeed revenue neutral. There's nothing dubious about it - it's trivial to check.
You are talking about revenue neutral at a population level. What matters to individuals is their own revenue. The impact of these changes on individuals varied a great deal. Many middle class lost valuable deductions while wealthy people saw their rate drop dramatically. There is absolutely nothing remotely neutral about any of that. So the only context where neutrality can be asserted is the same one where the statistician drowns in a lake that is an average of less than three feet deep.
>You are talking about revenue neutral at a population level.
Yes, that is the econometric definition of revenue neutral tax changes. Of course most any change in tax structures will affect individuals, but that is nearly irrelevant (unless you never want a change to tax law).
> while wealthy people saw their rate drop dramatically
Have you looked up this claim with actual historical effective tax rate numbers? It's simply not true.
Here's [1] CBO total effective tax rates across many income level, from 1979 to 2005. Look at Table 1, then Total Effective Rate (which is what each group actually paid). Take, for example, Reagan tax cut of 1986, and pick a window around it, saw 1984 to 1987. Top 0.01 effective rate increased from 31.8 to 33.9. Lowest quintile rate decreased from 10.2 to 8.7.
In fact, for the 1986 cut, the lowest 4 quintiles saw a slight tax decrease, the top quintile saw a tax increase.
Next, look through the individual income tax rates - again, the same. After the Reagan tax cut in 1986, the top 0.01% saw an increase in effective rates - higher than any from 1979 (start of the dataset) through 87.
Here too you see the bottom 80% ending up with lower tax rates across the board.
I don't know where you got the idea rates dropped dramatically. It's not in this data.
My dad made around a quarter million a year as an airline pilot and was unable to make use of tax deductions to avoid the 75% taxes. When Reagan did his thing my dad's tax rate went down to around 33% or something like that. My dad loved to go around town bragging about his money and his income. When Reagan's tax cut gave him what amounted to roughly doubling his income he made sure everyone within a radius of five miles or so knew about that. His take home pay went from roughly $65k to $165k and he couldn't stop talking about that. And your point is some population level statistics make that into something that doesn't count. Maybe you need to take a walk and talk to some people to get a clearer idea of how people think about all this?
So an anecdote, hearsay at best, of one person is stronger evidence than the entirety of the entire population?
Maybe instead of your claiming "wealthy people saw their rate drop dramatically" you should more accurately claim "I heard one wealthy person claim their rate dropped, but I didn't actually inspect their taxes... The majority didn't see this mythical drop. Most saw the opposite." That is the claim you've provided evidence for.
If your world view is formed from choosing one off examples over well-sourced, broad based evidence, it's not surprising you believe things that are simply untrue.
> Maybe you need to take a walk.....
Maybe you need to learn what terms mean and how evidence works to before making wild claims. Anecdotes are irrelvant compared to population when making population claims for good reason.
