Rate-History Record — The Excavated Tax Trajectory

The register carries each engraved schedule as its own statute (LP-071 → LP-072 → LP-073 → LP-074). The failed original petition is recorded as a refusal and forms no stratum. The later LP-074 conditional statute is a separate instrument, and it became the current stratum after certification.

LP-074 passed 5–0 in 2278. The original 2279–2288 Path 2 window closed lawfully without a run, and LP-075 compelled the remedial process in 2291. The final 2294 record passed Findings I–IV and, independently, B1–B6. Both schedules certified, and valid notice made the exact cascade effective in 2295.

The $10,000,000 earned-income threshold has not changed since the layered schedule introduced it. The founding cap predates the threshold and taxed net worth rather than income. The era-year boundaries at Y47 (SCM transfer) and Y112 (the abundance petition) are record convention, as is the Foundation/Confiscation split at Y11.

The band-to-point precision arc

The two founding strata were governed by bands, each a range within which the layer's authority set posture annually. A band was what a young institution could honestly enforce. At 18f771d the layered schedule still read "90–99% / 45–50% / 20–25% / 10–15%," one range per layer, because enforcement capability had not yet matured to the point where a single number could be held.

At 5c3a0f6 the bands were cut to points in a single restructure: 70 / 35 / 17 / 8, a rounded point-halving cascade. Band-to-point is itself doctrine: point rates are what a matured enforcement capability produces. That historical schedule held through 2294. LP-074 then established the exact 50 / 25 / 12.5 / 6.25 mathematical cascade after its evidence gates cleared.

The one-million-to-present population arc

The founding-era record numbers the civilization at roughly one million citizens. The same figure anchors the earliest Savings Circulation Mandate parameters: a $100,000-per-citizen average savings balance reads as $100 billion in aggregate across one million citizens. At that scale a single blunt rate on accumulated wealth was sufficient, because the concentration vectors were few enough for one instrument to watch them all.

As the population and its economy grew, no single blunt instrument could carry all three of taxation's founding functions: revenue, anti-concentration, and trust. The layered schedule divided the burden among the layers by benefit received. The SCM then took anti-concentration off the marginal rate entirely. Each stage of growth retired a function the tax rate had carried alone, and each retirement allowed the rate to fall.

Era artifacts — the 70-schedule period

The Consolidation-era rate (70 / 35 / 17 / 8) is the schedule under which the civilization's Doctrine-Snapshot v14.5 simulations were authored. These cards are pinned artifacts of that stratum. They are never revised to track the schedule. They show the world as it stood at the 70-rate:

• The Wealth Ceiling — Sera Voss, the neural-diving composer, grosses $200M and keeps $60M at the 70% top marginal rate. The card is the canonical illustration of the elite-wealth market the point schedule was tuned to permit while the SCM prevents concentration.
• The Cradle Offensive and The Border Audit — the other two v14.5 civilizational snapshots of the same period.

Doctrine-Snapshot-stamped simulations are era-pinned by design and left exactly as engraved. They record the 70-schedule period and do not describe the current rate. No historical result is recalculated when a later schedule changes.

The succession chain — the fourth and fifth beats

A replaced stratum is superseded and stays in the record, which keeps where the civilization stood at each stage and why it moved on. The current rate authority is LP-074 at 50 / 25 / 12.5 / 6.25, together with the 2294 Path 2 certificates and valid effective notice. LP-073 is historical.

The fourth beat is a refusal, and it replaced no stratum. A petition to halve the cascade once more was filed on an abundance argument and lost in the chambers. The gauntlet returned 1–4. An advocacy review, argued cold with every citation verified, took the vote again and moved three chambers (Court, Sanctuary, and Main), reaching 3–2. Enactment requires zero failing chambers. Meritboard and Lower held, and the schedule did not move.

The chambers were asked whether these rates should fall now, on the evidence presented. Whether rates should fall at all was not before them. They judged the evidence authored rather than audited, and declined. The record keeps the defeated 2213 challenger beside the enacted strata.

The contest's literature is preserved in full. The opposition brief that held two chambers at both adjudications, the advocacy brief that moved three, and the supplemental steelman registered after the vote closed all publish in perpetuity at the Ratification Record. Under standing doctrine a failed petition is a boundary marker, and the briefs record where the boundary was drawn and why.

The fifth beat came sixty-three years later. The closed line does not permit a resubmission, so at approximately Y175 (2276) a successor line was filed as a new petition built on what the refusal had established. It passed its gauntlet 5–0 and became LP-074, the first zero-fail law of the rate line and the register's first conditional rate law.

The successor answered the refusal through how it was built. Its structure removed the Y112 (2213) objections, which six decades of rebuttal had not out-argued. The chambers had refused to vote authored fiscal facts true, and the successor does not ask them to. It separates the chambers' legal judgment from the audit's factual judgment entirely. The chambers vote the rule, the standing audit finds the facts, and the rule commences only if and when the facts arrive. Every authored magnitude from the old record is quarantined as legally incapable of activating anything. The old petition depended fatally on those magnitudes, and under the successor they are inadmissible, so the 2213 objections cannot be raised against them.

The first Path 2 window (2279–2288) closed without a run under the original no-duty rule. In 2289 that lawful silence became a public dispute over legitimacy. Sanctuary reformers objected to a silent veto. Main objected to a law that could not be tested. Institutional defenders answered that no duty had been adopted. Lower observers demanded that Schedule B remain separately protected. LP-075 resolved the procedure in 2291 and left the result to the existing Path 2 rules. Its remedial run locked in 2292 and published in 2294.

The final result is a lawful activation. Findings I–IV passed with modest margins, and Schedule A certified. The separate Lower Incidence audit then passed B1–B6, and Schedule B certified. Valid notice made the full exact cascade effective in 2295. The reduction increases first-pass private allocation, and the SCM remains the secondary circulation and anti-idle-wealth envelope.

The era rhythm — a lengthening institutional half-life

Measured by intervals, the civilization's structural tax moments are 12, 35, and 65 years apart: Y0 to the layered schedule at Y12, Y12 to the point cascade at Y47, and Y47 to the abundance petition at Y112. Each interval is roughly double the one before it.

The intervals record an institutional half-life that lengthens as the institutions mature. A young civilization rewrites its tax posture every decade because it is still discovering what the instrument is for. A mature one goes two generations between structural questions because the earlier answers keep holding. The spacing records the same maturation as the band-to-point arc, measured in time instead of precision, and does not indicate drift or neglect.

The fifth beat follows the same rhythm. The refile at approximately Y175 (2276) came 63 years after the Y112 (2213) failure, close to the ~65-year cadence the intervals had reached. The interval then stopped doubling. The civilization now returns to its rate posture about twice a century, on a clock set by evidence. This time nothing had broken: six decades of preregistered audit data had finally accumulated enough to make the question answerable.

The Consolidation Era held through 2294 and was superseded in 2295 by the Exact Halving-Cascade Era. Era-year boundaries remain record convention. The intervals above run between structural moments (Y12, Y47, Y112, ~Y175) and not between era labels. The third figure, 65, runs from the point cascade’s engraving to its first challenge and does not measure the duration of the operative rate era.

The through-line — the Trajectory Doctrine

The direction of travel outlived the petition that failed to advance it. The first clause of the Trajectory Doctrine reads: Top marginal rates track demonstrated institutional need. Taxation's three founding functions are revenue, anti-concentration, and trust. Each retires as its replacement matures: automation revenue for the first, structural anti-concentration instruments for the second, and a verified institutional track record for the third. Rates ratchet down as functions demonstrably retire. That logic shaped the v14.5 transition, when the Savings Circulation Mandate took anti-concentration off the marginal rate and the founding bands were cut to points on those grounds.

The doctrine was endorsed 5–0 across the ratification chambers. The chambers that refused the reduction endorsed the principle behind it unanimously. Their objection was to the evidence: they had been told the facts and had not been shown them.

Under the doctrine, any rate reduction requires audited evidence per the Path 2 standing audit — never authored facts — at the standard zero-fail threshold. LP-074 wrote the condition into law. LP-075 ensured that the test could not be silently avoided. The final 2294 disposition supplied the required answer: Findings I–IV passed, Schedule A certified, B1–B6 independently passed, and Schedule B certified. The Y112 line closed as the single failed predecessor and was never reopened. The successor is a new line. The closed-line rule exists to protect the distinction between a new line and a resubmission.

The trajectory is unchanged. The 2213 refusal and the later 2294 certification establish that every step down has to be earned in the open. The architecture carries a long-run downward expectation as functions retire, and no reduction occurs unless every required finding passes. The record states the standing rule: rates fall when shown, and hold when a required fact is not shown.