The 1978 Revenue Act's own text never says Steiger

The record

Congress enacted the Revenue Act of 1978 as Public Law 95-600, signed 6 November 1978 and printed at 92 Stat. 2763. Section 401 repealed the prior alternative tax on individual capital gains. Section 402 rewrote Internal Revenue Code section 1202 so a noncorporate taxpayer could deduct 60 percent, instead of the prior 50 percent, of a net capital gain from gross income, effective for taxable years ending after 31 October 1978. Section 403 cut the corporate alternative capital-gains rate from 30 to 28 percent. Combined with the top individual rate then in effect, this reduced the maximum effective tax on a long-term capital gain to 28 percent. The Act's own short title is the "Revenue Act of 1978." The word "Steiger" appears nowhere in the enacted text.

What the sources establish

The Joint Committee on Taxation's General Explanation of the Revenue Act of 1978, published 12 March 1979, is the legislative record's own account of the change: it states Congress believed existing capital-gains taxes had "contributed to the shortage of investment funds needed for capital formation purposes generally, and especially for new and small businesses," and that a lower rate would increase asset sales and capital mobility. That is a stated rationale connecting the cut to small-business capital formation generally, not a measured claim about any specific venture-fundraising total, and the Joint Committee's own explanation does not use "Steiger" either. The floor-amendment nickname, after Representative William Steiger, belongs to legislative history and press coverage of the bill's drafting, not the public law or its official explanation.

Scope and revision

The Act's capital-gains provisions applied government-wide; they created no venture-specific vehicle or exemption. The 60 percent deduction and 28 percent corporate rate were superseded by later tax acts, including the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and, comprehensively, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which eliminated the capital-gains rate differential for a period. This entry describes only the 1978 text and its contemporaneous explanation; it does not trace every later amendment to sections 1201 or 1202.

The decision in front of you

An investor or founder citing "the Steiger Amendment" should know the phrase describes the bill's legislative path, not a section of the enacted law; the citation a lawyer can actually check is Public Law 95-600 itself, or the Joint Committee's General Explanation. Whether the 1978 cut caused any later increase in venture fundraising is a causal claim this record does not make, and a reader should expect a fundraising dataset with its own methodology, not a tax statute, to support or refute it.

• Is a "Steiger Amendment" claim sourced to the statute, the Joint Committee's explanation, or a retelling of either?
• Does the claim distinguish the stated rationale from a measured causal effect on investment?
• Has the cited provision, section 1202 or section 1201, been amended again since 1978 in the version now being discussed?

The 1978 Act's text and its explanatory record show a rate change with a stated purpose; the popular label attached to it is attribution built up over decades of retelling, not a fact the enacted law or its explanation contains.