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Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

bloomberg.com

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Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#51

Post by alkonaut »

Retric wrote: post #38
ekianjo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol healthcare is far from being free in Japan.

100% free sets up perverse incentives. The minimum subsidy is 70% and there are effective price controls. So the actual bill is often higher in the US for those with decent insurance.

> 100% free sets up perverse incentives.

How is that? I realize 100% free is pretty rare (I have a usual out-of-pocket cost of around $20 for an ER visit for example) but what are the perverse incentives created by completely free healthcare?

You mean that those who supply the healthcare are incentivized to give more expensive treatments, because the patient doesn't need to keep an eye on the bill?

Shouldn't the buyer (which in case of publicly financed healthcare is the government) be the one who oversees the cost, and not the patient?

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#52

Post by flexie »

atemerev wrote: post #10

In other countries, taxes are complicated (no citation needed). There's income tax, but there are also social security payments, industry-specific taxes, etc. And you have to pay for your own education and healthcare! Danish tax is simple and all inclusive. It is around 50%, which is about the same as in US if all hidden obligatory payments are taken into account. But it is all inclusive: all education and healthcare…

Taxes are very complicated in Denmark. I don't know anybody who can calculate their own tax without computer systems, and I say that as a lawyer who talks to accountants and tax advisors regularly.

Nobody just pays 50 percent. The tax is progressive and there are numerous deductions and special cases. The actual percentage of income paid is closer to 40 for most people. And then there is the mess of indirect taxes. And the details of the tax rules change significantly all the time.

But most of the majority of Danes, which are on some kind of welfare/pension/public education grants (2.2 million out of 4 million voters) and the half of the 1.8 million employed that work for the government, like the current system.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#53

Post by rayiner »

atemerev wrote: post #10

In other countries, taxes are complicated (no citation needed). There's income tax, but there are also social security payments, industry-specific taxes, etc. And you have to pay for your own education and healthcare! Danish tax is simple and all inclusive. It is around 50%, which is about the same as in US if all hidden obligatory payments are taken into account. But it is all inclusive: all education and healthcare…

Americans do not pay anywhere near 50% in taxes. A high income American that makes money as ordinary income (rather than capital gains) and does not own a house and lives in a high tax city will pay almost 50% if you factor in federal, state, healthcare, and sales tax. Everyone else pays a lot less. Typical including health insurance premium is probably around 30-35%. In a state like Georgia with a generous employer that pays your insurance premium, a family can probably pull in close to six figures and pay under 25% all-in if they own a house.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#54

Post by alkonaut »

crdoconnor wrote: post #12

>The government's plan involves cutting the top rate of income tax by 5 percentage points >The main idea behind the change, which is now being discussed by parliament, is to make salaried work more attractive and woo some 40,000 people off welfare in the process. Not a bad plan for a country that faces labor shortages and growing pressure on its costly social safety net from an aging population. This is a sales pitch…

> Somebody, somewhere made a campaign contribution

You are assuming that the chance of being elected to public office increases with the amount of money you can spend on trying. That's cute.

Edit: You aren't american. But still so cynical about politics :)

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#55

Post by dpatru »

The fallacy here is to aggregate the people. Democracy has been compared to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Proposals to cut government will fail when more than 50℅ figure they are net beneficiaries. This does not mean the system is just or that the lambs approve of their exploitation.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#56

Post by vlehto »

cerebellum42 wrote: post #45
vlehto wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they have VAT too. Everybody has to have VAT in EU. Or else EU gets really angry.

It's not like they have VAT because they are in the EU. They had VAT since 1962, and they have had it at the current rate of 25% (higher than most EU countries) since 1992, which is way before the EU VAT directive was even a thing. Edit: Correction, the EU VAT directive actually has its origins before 1992, but still after Denmark already had its own VAT.

My point was that you can safely assume that any EU country has at least 15% VAT.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#57

Post by rayiner »

humanrebar wrote: post #44
VeejayRampay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be serious here. I'm French, all for high taxes and all but please let's not delude ourselves thinking that American people pay "around 50%" taxes. As soon as you have enough money to afford it, you'll pay a tax lawyer to get that down to about 15% or something, thanks to a bajillion hidden tax system loopholes allowing the rich to get an advantage on the less fortunate. And even if you take into account the pr…

> As soon as you have enough money to afford it, you'll pay a tax lawyer to get that down to about 15% or something You need a lot of money before that's an option. By that point, you have enough to be one of those citizen-of-the-world globe-trotting types with vacation homes that double as convenient tax shelters. That is to say, the American middle class pays quite a bit in taxes. Even the poor working class pay a…

Working poor also get the earned income tax credit which mostly offsets their payroll taxes.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#58

Post by unknown_apostle »

EJTH wrote: post #32

As a dane I can tell you the headline is a lie, almost everyone I know thinks that we pay way too much for the mediocre services we get.

(Caution: serious venting ahead ;-)

Same here in Belgium. Both the situation and the propaganda about it.

Total tax pressure is extremely high. Government services in Belgium are mediocre at best.

Imagine every public institute disease possible (rent seeking, no skin in the game, resistance to reform, employees not giving a shit, impossible size, …). Then multiply it by the fragmentation between Belgium’s many governments and departments and regions and bureaucracies. Then there's the EU.

But in the end it all depends on whom you ask.

The ever growing group of net receivers of the system are very happy. Multinationals and the very rich don’t care.

Even people who are employed in the private sector don’t care. They have a significant portion of their taxes paid for by their employer. So for them it remains an abstract thing as long as they don’t get fired.

The ones who sweat extremely high taxes the most are self employed people and SMEs. Basically most people who are personally involved with a business and are willing to work very hard to get ahead with something.

But hey, it’s social democracy so the majority is what matters! And boy let me tell you, the majority is very happy with socialism. I bet a lot of them would rather get rid of refugees and immigrants than abort socialism.

And since the majority has got it all figured out, I’m looking to emigrate, away from Utopia.

It’ll have to be Australia or NZ because Canada and the US have closed down. Anything Western outside the EU that’s just slightly behind on the curve is fine.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#59

Post by hanspeter »

ulrikmoe wrote: post #25

This is simply not true. In Denmark we have a welfare and tax scheme that benefits the majority at the expense of the productive few and the poor (Director's law?). I have never met a danish entrepreneur who didn't complain about taxes, never ever... http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...

And I have never met one who did complain about taxes (I haven't asked about it either). The danish successful entrepreneur Morten Strunge recently entered the tax discussion saying that he did not think much about taxes and that current proposed tax reliefs would not make much difference to him.

I see myself as an entrepreneur and I am not complaining about taxes. In fact I have a hard time seeing taxes as something working particularly against entrepreneurs.

1) When you're an entrepreneur you keep your salary low and you re-invest the profit in your company. This will limit the amount of taxes you pay personally and in the company.

2) As an entrepreneur you likely have a dream about huge growth in the company and making a lot of money in the end. Why would you worry about having marginally less "lot of money" in the end?

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#60

Post by tobltobs »

EJTH wrote: post #43
lumberjack wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus 30% of the workforce is employed in the public sector so for a lot of people it's more serious than just some reduced benefits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_se...

This is a more probable reason. The only people I know who are against tax and public sector cut downs are the people who are actually employed by the state.

This would suggest that 70% of danish people would welcome tax and public sector cut downs, which is a false assumption.
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