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

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

#121

Post by harryh »

newman314 wrote: post #120
harryh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because all taxes are taxes on people. Corporate taxes are just a convoluted and bad way of doing so.

Are you proposing that eliminating corporate taxes would mean that somehow you would make more at the end of the day and be taxed less overall? I'm not sure I see that happening.

If you eliminate corporate taxes then the shareholders of the corporation would make more money(1). You can then make up for the lost corporate tax revenue by taxing those shareholders more. It would be a simpler and more efficient system overall.

1. Probably also the employees would make more and the customers would pay less for products as well. This has to do with something called tax incidence.

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

#122

Post by SlowComputer »

waybull wrote: post #18
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.

Odds that this brand new account is getting a million cash: basically zero. Anybody who's getting a million cash is probably getting many millions through lower-tax vehicles (e.g. equity), and over the course of a decade has a much much lower effective tax rate.

You are a fool.

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

#123

Post by thesteamboat »

jsankey wrote: post #38
themartorana wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't necessarily need to. We could have a `digit-sales tax', i.e. count the number of digits in the item cost and add a tax at that percent. Something less than $10 only has a 1% tax, while something costing $10,000 has a 5% tax.

Clearly the numbers should be adjusted if someone wants to turn this into a serious tax proposal, but it seems possible to design a progressive sales tax.

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

#124

Post by afarrell »

gnaritas wrote: post #66
Mikeb85 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a terrible solution. Ideally a flat tax (which pretty much always means a lower rate than high earners pay) simplifies the tax system, and makes high earners less likely to evade taxes. However it doesn't change the fact that really high earners get a lot of their wealth from investments, so in the end they'll still pay a lower total 'rate'. The highest tax burden will still be paid by upper middle-class pro…

> It's not a terrible solution. It's precisely a terrible solution. Yes, taxes are hard, but a solution that punishes the poor (or the not rich) by not recognizing the marginal utility of money is terrible in any form.

> taxes should be progressive at all levels

Are you proposing replacing the tax bracket system with an algebraic equation?

I wonder if that would be more or less confusing. I guess if you just showed people "this is what the tax curve looks like", it would be obvious that:

1) They need to use a calculator or look up in the tax table.

2) You don't actually lose money when your income goes from $37,449 to $37,451.

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

#125

Post by gnaritas »

Zhenya wrote: post #116
gnaritas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we; that's what democracy is for, we evolve and over time, the law catches up as the common morality evolves. Or do you really think slave owners deserved their money because it was made legally? That was your argument, that legal means they deserve it, stand by your argument.

And "we" decide laws. I'll stick to those.

I didn't say you shouldn't, I just said being legal doesn't make something just; that's a fact.

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

#126

Post by gnaritas »

powertower wrote: post #115
gnaritas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and some people should be ashamed of complaining in the name of decency. > How about when you are the among the ones that took the most risk in life, the ones that worked the hardest Ah, the just world fallacy and survivor-ship bias all in one. You didn't work the hardest or take the most risks, far more people who worked harder and took equal risks didn't get lucky.

You're promoting the false narrative that if someone does better in life it is just chance and nothing else... If you fail, it's not your fault. If you succeed, it's not really your doing. The formula for success has more than the single variable of luck in it. Luck plays a part, but so does allot of other variables.

> You're promoting the false narrative that if someone does better in life it is just chance and nothing

That's a straw-man, I didn't say it's "just" chance and it's called a fallacy, not a narrative, and it's a fact, not false. It's a cognitive bias all humans have to attribute their success to their own efforts, and that's what's false.

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

#127

Post by isolate »

gnaritas wrote: post #126
powertower wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're promoting the false narrative that if someone does better in life it is just chance and nothing else... If you fail, it's not your fault. If you succeed, it's not really your doing. The formula for success has more than the single variable of luck in it. Luck plays a part, but so does allot of other variables.

> You're promoting the false narrative that if someone does better in life it is just chance and nothing That's a straw-man, I didn't say it's "just" chance and it's called a fallacy, not a narrative, and it's a fact, not false. It's a cognitive bias all humans have to attribute their success to their own efforts, and that's what's false.

Reality is somewhere between the two positions being argued.

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

#128

Post by Mikeb85 »

gnaritas wrote: post #114
Mikeb85 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people also thought "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" was fair. Most seemingly disagreed, given how history has unfolded. For the record, I agree with Piketty, Marx, and others of that particular persuasion. I'm all for progressive taxation, wealth and inheritance tax, all of it. But I'm also not ignorant of history...

Nor am I, and implying progressives are communists is quite intellectually dishonest.

Nor are you what? I said I agree with Piketty and Marx.

Anyhow, the example was just rhetoric. The point is that communism started because people thought it was unfair that there was a rentier class who essentially monopolized wealth because they had inherited wealth. And communism fell because people thought it was unfair that people who were lazy made the same as people who worked hard.

Studies have shown that most people in western societies prefer inequality as long as someone has less than them. They think inequality is 'fair'. Why do you think people value celebrities and rich people? People are happy with our 'lottery' system, where anyone can become rich, even if the majority don't, and even if the average struggles...

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

#129

Post by baddox »

morgante wrote: post #75
baddox wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's not so clear how much of a service the government is providing there. Do you eagerly sign contracts with people you suspect would cheat you if they thought they could get away with it?

> Do you eagerly sign contracts with people you suspect would cheat you if they thought they could get away with it? Yes, especially you include corporations as "people." Without the rule of law, I'm quite sure that corporations would find even more ways to generally break contracts and not honor their commitments.

Why would they do that, and why would any corporations deal with corporations with a history of cheating?

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

#130

Post by harryh »

wutbrodo wrote: post #118
harryh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy an asset that only appreciates at the rate of inflation, then I end up paying taxes on what amounts to a fake gain. Even if it appreciates faster my effective tax rate is higher than the actual number used to calculate my taxes.

> If I buy an asset that only appreciates at the rate of inflation, then I end up paying taxes on what amounts to a fake gain. Even if it appreciates faster my effective tax rate is higher than the actual number used to calculate my taxes. The same is true of getting a raise and paying higher taxes on a "fake gain" (i.e., your effective tax rate slowly rises as each boundary shifts lower in real terms). That being sa…

What you are describing is different from what I'm talking about. You are talking about how tax rates can go up over time if the brackets are not adjusted for inflation.

What I'm talking about is the fact that you can have a nominal gain that you pay taxes on that is not a real (inflation adjusted) gain at all.

These are two different problems. The first we handle by adjusting the tax brackets every year. The second we do not handle. I suppose we could, but it would be a lot more complicated.

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