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Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#21

Post by geofft »

SlowComputer wrote: post #11
gopi wrote: post #8

Most of the these articles never consider state/local level income taxes. For a person in California the total top capital gain tax rate is more than 33%. This is actually the second highest in the world. If you consider the regular income tax its even much worse, currently the combined income tax rate in California is more than 50%

I live in California. I'm not "super rich" but we earn more than $1MM/year. For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. In reality, only high earners pay taxes. And high-salaried people are getting screwed under Obama's war against the most productive citizens.

> In reality, only high earners pay taxes.

What do you mean by this?

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#22

Post by waybull »

bobby_9x wrote: post #12
anu_gupta wrote: post #2

Good. About time some of these people paid their fair share instead of exploiting loopholes that they can access because they have so much wealth.

The top 10% pay over 80% of the federal taxes in the US. This, combined with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world means they are already paying more than their "fair share".

If that's true, then it almost exactly matches the percentage of wealth they control.

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#23

Post by acchow »

chongli wrote: post #13
SlowComputer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in California. I'm not "super rich" but we earn more than $1MM/year. For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. In reality, only high earners pay taxes. And high-salaried people are getting screwed under Obama's war against the most productive citizens.

You're caught in the middle ground. If you were a billionaire earning hundreds of millions per year you could afford to spend 10 million a year to hire a team of experts to hide all your money in the Caymans.

Where did you get these prices from? Why do you think it costs $10 million a year to hide all your money in the Caymans?

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#24

Post by ebola1717 »

bobby_9x wrote: post #12
anu_gupta wrote: post #2

Good. About time some of these people paid their fair share instead of exploiting loopholes that they can access because they have so much wealth.

The top 10% pay over 80% of the federal taxes in the US. This, combined with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world means they are already paying more than their "fair share".

The top 10% also controls 80% of the wealth.

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#25

Post by emcq »

SlowComputer wrote: post #11
gopi wrote: post #8

Most of the these articles never consider state/local level income taxes. For a person in California the total top capital gain tax rate is more than 33%. This is actually the second highest in the world. If you consider the regular income tax its even much worse, currently the combined income tax rate in California is more than 50%

I live in California. I'm not "super rich" but we earn more than $1MM/year. For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. In reality, only high earners pay taxes. And high-salaried people are getting screwed under Obama's war against the most productive citizens.

One perspective is that you are making 20x the average household income but keeping 1/2. Not too shabby. However I agree that it seems ridiculous that income is taxed so much more than capitol gains and likely provides much more positive contributions to society.

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#26

Post by curiousgeorgio »

nitrogen wrote: post #14
SlowComputer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in California. I'm not "super rich" but we earn more than $1MM/year. For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. In reality, only high earners pay taxes. And high-salaried people are getting screwed under Obama's war against the most productive citizens.

For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. If that were for all taxes, and the marginal rate was still better for lower incomes, I don't think that sounds so bad. Sure, we humans always want to keep more of our hard work for ourselves, but pragmatically speaking I'd be okay if my marginal rate at 7 figures (which I'm nowhere near) was 53% in exchange for the s…

While you are entitled to that opinion, I think it's really hard to say with any confidence what your attitude would be at a vastly different income level. It may be useful to frame the idea in a different way:

You sound as if you'd approve of a ~53% tax rate at an income level higher than your own, but not necessarily at your own level. For the sake of argument, if you were to work just as hard for every dollar at that level as you do now for every dollar, but simply worked that much more (so every dollar required the same amount of work), do you think you'd still be willing to only keep 47 cents of each dollar? Similarly, if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck?

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#27

Post by eru »

jmspring wrote: post #10

I'm not a Trump fan, and despite likely tax hits, his proposal of simplifying the tax code (as many have done before him), getting rid of the IRS (yes jobs lost, but really, I got a certified letter owing $0.51 and they were "too busy with this category to answer. click ") would be a positive thing. One short summary of his proposal -- http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/donald-trump-unveils-his-... I think a pure fla…

Just copy whatever Hong Kong or Singapore or Estonia are doing taxwise.

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#28

Post by product456 »

nitrogen wrote: post #14
SlowComputer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in California. I'm not "super rich" but we earn more than $1MM/year. For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. In reality, only high earners pay taxes. And high-salaried people are getting screwed under Obama's war against the most productive citizens.

For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. If that were for all taxes, and the marginal rate was still better for lower incomes, I don't think that sounds so bad. Sure, we humans always want to keep more of our hard work for ourselves, but pragmatically speaking I'd be okay if my marginal rate at 7 figures (which I'm nowhere near) was 53% in exchange for the s…

I think the idea is that the government isn't spending the money so efficiently that this outcome is likely at all.

Re: Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in taxes

#29

Post by harryh »

curiousgeorgio wrote: post #26
nitrogen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every additional dollar I earn, I only get to keep 47 cents of it, just counting _income_ taxes. If that were for all taxes, and the marginal rate was still better for lower incomes, I don't think that sounds so bad. Sure, we humans always want to keep more of our hard work for ourselves, but pragmatically speaking I'd be okay if my marginal rate at 7 figures (which I'm nowhere near) was 53% in exchange for the s…

While you are entitled to that opinion, I think it's really hard to say with any confidence what your attitude would be at a vastly different income level. It may be useful to frame the idea in a different way: You sound as if you'd approve of a ~53% tax rate at an income level higher than your own, but not necessarily at your own level. For the sake of argument, if you were to work just as hard for every dollar at t…

> if you were earning 7 figures and wanted to help society / people in need, would the government really be your best choice in terms of bang for your buck?

Has anyone ever tried to make a serious attempt to analytically tackle this question? There are a lot of people that try to rank charities against each other in terms of effectiveness. Could the same be done with government? Or even some portion of government? I have absolutely no idea, but this seems like an interesting question.

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