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For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

nytimes.com

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Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#301

Post by Consultant32452 »

notatoad wrote: post #196
cpr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Rumsfeld announced that 2.3T USD were missing from the military? https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-157... Yeah, nor do most people. The date he announced that? September 10, 2001. The section of the Pentagon hit? The accounting wing with all the records.

If they were going to fly a plane into the pentagon to cover up 2.3T in missing funds, why would they bother to announce the shortfall beforehand? You don't orchestrate an elaborate cover-up, and also publicly announce the thing you're trying to cover up.

I don't buy into this particular conspiracy theory, but the answer to your question is really simple. Try to imagine the US government as a mob. "Helpful" services it runs are like fronts. So when the government builds a library, it's like the mob running a garbage collection company. The helpful services are fronts for complex murderous organizations with many factions. Once you see it that way, it's easy to see why one faction might tattle or fight against another faction within the mob, even though they are still all kind of in on the game together.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#302

Post by danans »

refurb wrote: post #275
danans wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the title is click baity, but the ultra wealthy do pay a lower effective tax rate than me, and I'm probably in the top 10% of income percentile. But the observations of the article itself check out. The tax system has gotten radically less progressive over the last 50 years. The argument is over whether or not it should be made more or less progressive given current realities. People can differ in their opini…

It’s gotten less progressive? 2nd graph here [1] shows the top 1% has steady increased their share of all taxes since 1986. I have no idea what it looks like before 1986. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/top-1-percent-tax-rate/

You are switching stats again, and I can't tell whether you're doing it on purpose, or are unaware that you are doing it.

The stat under discussion in the article is not "share of all taxes", it's effective individual income tax rate by income percentile. The latter has definitely become less progressive over time, as the article makes clear with data.

If "share of all taxes" since taxes is a statistic you think is illustrative of something relevant, notice that since 1980, real family income for the top 5% has dramatically outpaced the median real family income, so it only makes sense that their "share of all taxes" would go up:

https://www.cbpp.org/income-gains-widely-shared-in-early-pos...

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#303

Post by sigstoat »

sidlls wrote: post #238
isoskeles wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generals are not paid that well, at least not compared to a Silicon Valley software engineer's salary. I think they make ~$200k ( https://militarypay.defense.gov/Portals/3/Documents/ActiveDu... ), so if any of them are obscenely wealthy, best guess is they make a lot of money off of "speaking events" like any other person with political connections.

They also have many other benefits, including housing subsidies, commissary access, essentially free health care, etc. Officers especially are compensated very well.

combat zone pay, as well, perhaps?

seems like a general with a 40 year career who could (and did) save all of his money could have accumulated a few million dollars in cars without very many shenanigans, if that was their sole financial goal in life.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#304

Post by dexterdog »

kaibee wrote: post #185
dexterdog wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want it to just be illegal for any person to gift money to another person?

I think there is a reasonably balance to be found somewhere between not being able to give your friend 5$ and being able to make everyone even tangentially related to you into billionaires that do nothing but collect and spend the interest on their wealth.

Bezos is with about $110B. He is "tangentially related" to far more than 110 people. There is a solid track record of inheritors of massive wealth pissing it all away in a generation or two so you don't have to worry too much about it.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#306

Post by nobleach »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #182
cpr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Rumsfeld announced that 2.3T USD were missing from the military? https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-157... Yeah, nor do most people. The date he announced that? September 10, 2001. The section of the Pentagon hit? The accounting wing with all the records.

I do recall that, and recall discussion of it after 9/11. As for what I infer is an implication of the 9/11 attack being motivated by a desire to cover this up, I can't find any reference to the outer ring of the west wing of the Pentagon being "the accounting wing". Even if it were, I can't imagine that we're doing our federal accounting in the 21st Century on paper that's stored only in one central location. That s…

> I can't imagine that we're doing our federal accounting in the 21st Century on paper that's stored only in one central location. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, nor do I even remotely believe the idea that there's some sort of cover-up. But I will say one should _never_ assume the federal government doesn't do almost everything in the most backward, ancient way possible. Certainly they have tons of meetings, task-forces and plans to update things. Yet mostly they just flounder and keep on using ancient technology... like paper.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#307

Post by gnicholas »

holy_city wrote: post #287
gnicholas wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would you hold an investment for 55 years that isn't beating inflation? The point is that the inflation is getting taxed also. Say inflation is at 2 percent per year over the period, and it's appreciating at 2 percent more than that annually. Then when you pay taxes, the "capital gain" amount includes both the real appreciation and the inflation. So in this example, half of the putative "gain" is actually infla…

>So in this example, half of the putative "gain" is actually inflation. Is this an issue in practice? Like I get if I have an asset that meets inflation for a decade than I'll lose value through the taxation. But that would be a bad investment, wouldn't it?

Yes, plenty of people have assets that don't appreciate a ton over a long period of time. Even with stock — you don't know in January if it's going to be worth more in December. So you make some calculation and sometimes end up holding it. Also, people hold onto things for sentimental reasons (inherited from relatives, etc.). But the bottom line is that anyone who holds any asset for 20 years and then sells it is going to pay tax on the inflation that occurred during that period.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#308

Post by gok »

0x0aff374668 wrote: post #245
gnicholas wrote: post #198

A couple of points regarding the lower rate of taxation for capital gains: • Capital gains are not inflation-indexed, which is one reason to have a lower rate. Consider three individuals: * Person A earned $100,000 working at BigCo in 2019 * Person B sold shares in 2019 that were purchased in 2017, for a (LTCG) gain of $100,000 * Person C sold shares in 2019 that were purchased in 1965, for a (LTCG) gain of $100,000…

"Double taxation" For such an in depth example you really missed this. I make $100,000 in year X. That covers two brackets, and my effective rate is, say, 25% federal. SO I have 75k left over. I invest 5k. It doubles to 10k. I'm then taxed on the 5k I earned. Not the 5k I invested. But do go on about double taxation.

The claim is that the thing you invested in doesn't magically double in value. It goes up in value because of other post-tax economic activity.

If you went to a roulette table at a casino, put $5K on black and it hit, you'd owe tax on that $5K because it's just income.

If you bought a company for $5K and then sold it a year later for $10K, its value typically increased because it was doing more business and therefore paying more taxes along the way.

Now, there are of course problems with this. Companies aren't purely valued on post-tax activities. In the event of real estate, it's even less convincing. If a vacation house doubles in value, it's unlikely this was due to the house's post-tax economic activity. So whether or not it's a double taxation is debatable but kind of irrelevant; it's remains a relatively fair way to raise revenue.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#309

Post by sbochins »

refurb wrote: post #118
danans wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the parent is responding to the article’s claim that the rich pay less. The article appears to be discussing the individual tax rates paid by the wealthiest, not the percentage of total tax paid. Those are two different things. The GP appears to have introduced the latter statistic, as often happens in this debate, to distract from the actual statistic under discussion.

I stated tax rate too. The bottom 50% effective tax rate is almost 1/10th of what the top 1%’s is. Therefore, the headline of the article “the rich pay less than than you” is pretty clearly false.

To understand why that doesn’t matter, try seeing how much the bottom 10% pay. This would include the homeless, etc. Should we expect them to be paying the same tax rate as the richest Americans?

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#310

Post by secabeen »

joshuamorton wrote: post #263
dv_dt wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a key language ambiguity here. Whatever your position on what the rich should pay, there is a question of what is being paid as a proportional rate of total income, vs what is being paid in absolute terms. Confounding that difference are also issues of income tax rate, vs capital gains rates and wealth vs income. The wealthy pay in absolute terms, more dollars, but they pay a lower rate than others.

No, according to this article, the 1% continue to pay a larger percent of their income. It is only once you move into the 1% of the 1% that the rate again decreases.

All of this is true, but it's beside the point. The perception in America is that the rich pay more in taxes as a percentage of their income than the middle class do. The marginal tax rates imply that, with middle class people paying either the 22% or 24% marginal rate, and rich people paying at at 35%+ rate. Thus, people think that we have a progressive system.

However, if you look at the data in this chart, you can see it's not true any longer. The actual combined rate paid by most Americans is between 22-28%. (It's on the lower end for the poorest Americans, and for the wealthiest as well) Fundamentally, the total taxes paid is flat.

I think most people think that the taxes paid chart looks like what it did in the late 70s/early 80s. In that chart, the poorest Americans pay about 20%, and the richest about 45%. That's where we should be, instead of where we are now.

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