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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

#31

Post by paulddraper »

skywhopper wrote: post #16
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…

The challenge of a "flat tax" is defining "income". It's not as easy as you think, and basic intuitive "fairness" will result in a lot of income being excluded. Given that today's graduated tax system results in top-earners paying lower percentages, a "flat" tax will surely be worse. As for getting rid of the IRS, who will collect, administer, and audit the flat tax?

That's why "fair tax" advocates flat sales tax. It still leads to questions, but sales taxes are usually simpler than income and capital taxes.

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

#32

Post by addicted »

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…

The flat tax is an incredibly pointless solution.

The flat tax is opposed to a progressive tax, that says that instead of having a tax rate of 15% for 100% of your income, you have a tax rate of 0% for the first $10000 of your income, 10% of the next 20000, and so on. This is something that can be calculated mentally, looked up using IRS published tables, or calculated with no effort in a 10 line script or some of the simplest Excel sheets possible.

The progressive nature of income tax is absolutely not a problem and recognizes the marginal value of money.

The problem is exemptions, etc., which a flat tax as opposed to a progressive tax does nothing to resolve.

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

#33

Post by gizmo686 »

skywhopper wrote: post #16
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…

The challenge of a "flat tax" is defining "income". It's not as easy as you think, and basic intuitive "fairness" will result in a lot of income being excluded. Given that today's graduated tax system results in top-earners paying lower percentages, a "flat" tax will surely be worse. As for getting rid of the IRS, who will collect, administer, and audit the flat tax?

What makes defining "income" in a flat tax scheme more challenging (or more important) than defining it for a progressive tax scheme?

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

#34

Post by themartorana »

paulddraper wrote: post #31
skywhopper wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge of a "flat tax" is defining "income". It's not as easy as you think, and basic intuitive "fairness" will result in a lot of income being excluded. Given that today's graduated tax system results in top-earners paying lower percentages, a "flat" tax will surely be worse. As for getting rid of the IRS, who will collect, administer, and audit the flat tax?

That's why "fair tax" advocates flat sales tax. It still leads to questions, but sales taxes are usually simpler than income and capital taxes.

This is my favorite proposal to date. Sales tax applies equally to a pencil and a yacht. It also encourages savings at lower income levels.

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

#35

Post by poke111 »

njharman wrote: post #20
bobby_9x wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 they own more than 80% of wealth then paying over 80% of the taxes is exactly fair.

Wealth != Income

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

#36

Post by morgante »

harryh wrote: post #29
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Could the same be done with government?

I don't think so, just because the goods it provides are so numerous and muddled.

Take one example: the fact that if I sign a contract I will feel legally obligated to follow through on it. This provides tremendous social good (billions of dollars worth), but it's very hard to quantify exactly how much.

Then you have to figure out how much it costs to provide that good. Should you include the total cost of government? No, probably not, because that includes lots of other goods. But the direct cost of say the courts isn't enough because they can only function thanks to the explicit backing of law enforcement and the implicit backing of the military.

It might be useful to start with a comparative analysis for governments though. It's probably impossible to delineate and assess every good the government provides, but you can compare the cost of governance and standard of living between countries.

In such an analysis, I highly doubt the US comes out well. Personally, I am 99% sure that my donations to the Against Malaria Foundation provide more total social good per dollar than my taxes.

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

#37

Post by enraged_camel »

acchow wrote: post #23
chongli wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's from the NYTimes piece linked in the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-w...

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

#38

Post by jsankey »

themartorana wrote: post #34
paulddraper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why "fair tax" advocates flat sales tax. It still leads to questions, but sales taxes are usually simpler than income and capital taxes.

This is my favorite proposal to date. Sales tax applies equally to a pencil and a yacht. It also encourages savings at lower income levels.

That's the problem, too -- it applies equally to necessities and luxuries. Sales taxes are regressive because there is a certain amount of non-discretionary spending everyone has to make, regardless of income, just to live.

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

#39

Post by Animats »

themartorana wrote: post #34
paulddraper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why "fair tax" advocates flat sales tax. It still leads to questions, but sales taxes are usually simpler than income and capital taxes.

This is my favorite proposal to date. Sales tax applies equally to a pencil and a yacht. It also encourages savings at lower income levels.

No, yachts get a break on sales tax.[1] Really.

[1] http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/business/new-jersey-cuts-...

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

#40

Post by pfisch »

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.

This is only true if you are an employee, and even then I think there are ways around it.
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