Is Harvard subject to the same 5% payout rule that private charitable foundations are? I really like that rule. If you're not giving out at least 5% of the capital every year, it strongly implies that the purpose of your foundation is something other than giving out charity and you should be declassified as a non-profit.
So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
81–90 of 119 posts
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Home ownership is living. Property rental is a business with risks not present in just ownership and is not always profitable. Property taxes effect home owners and landlords just the same, except landlords have to pass those expenses into rental prices if they wish to be in the green. > If you want to tax the rich simply tax the rich - let's say 5% tax on any property over 1 000 000 USD. You must be in California wh…
I'm in Poland :) I meant cumulatively. If you own 200 things worth 10 000 usd each you should still pay 5% for 100 of them. > Home ownership is living. If you really need to live in a million dollar house you should be able to pay for it. It's not living it's luxury.
I completely agree. Property taxes determine who can live where in my area more than any other factor including property price. There are pros and cons to that. For example if you want to turn a poor area into an incredibly wealthy area, cough cough Southlake, you raise the property taxes every year until poor people can no longer afford to live there and are forced to sell.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#83What a warped worldview. I´m on board with criticizing universities and foundations that have so much money around and the elitism that promotes. But this reads like someone desparately trying to point fingers. Take this: > That means America’s charitable foundations and billionaire universities hold at least $1.5 trillion in assets. That’s far more wealth than that of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Mu…
> Based in this argument alone, it makes more sense to tax "Individuals who own more than a Billion USD" instead of "Charitable organizations and Universities who own more than one Billion USD" if one were to be forced to chose between the two.
But the washington post is owned by bezos, so I suspect you won't see articles making your point anytime soon
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#84Catholic and other churches have a lot of money. Why not tax them?
It's unconstitutional, right there in first nine words of 1A, even before the free speech part. It's not that churches are excluded from taxation, it is that they are excluded from all effects of lawmaking because of religion. The laws made can only apply to non-church entities. You can apply building and safety and occupancy codes to the structure, you can apply income tax to the attendees, et c, but it says right o…
That is not correct. See this article [1] for a discussion of the leading case, Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 664 (1970), on this matter. See also some later cases that applied that one, such as Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U.S. 1 (1989), and Jimmy Swaggart Ministries v. California Bd. of Equalization, 493 U.S. 378 (1990), both of which are linked in that article.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/t...
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody makes purchases. Including the wealthy charities and endowments specified in the article. Get them all in a way they cannot hide. This is the most fair approach. The moment you invent a bunch of nonsense special cases to target the rich is where they can use special cases to hide. If you want to talk about how sales taxes disadvantage the poor what are some examples? School supplies, clothes, and backpacks?…
They are low cost items, but poor people also have less money to spend so that cancels out. Here's an example: Sales tax of 10%, poor person has an income of $1000 per month and spends it all. 10%/$100 of income goes to tax. Rich person has an income of $10000 per month. They spends $5000 and save $5000. 5%/$500 of income goes to tax. That's like a reverse progressive income, arguably very disadvantageous for the poo…
There are ways around this.
You could minimize the accounting by setting a rebate level, then issuing a check to everyone (yes, even the rich people) for that amount.
To use your numbers, if you issued a rebate check for $100/month to everyone, the poor person would pay an effective rate of zero, while the rich person would still pay an effective rate of $400/month.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only on the added value, e.g. a new smartphone glass. Work will be relatively cheaper. One of the most reasonable proposals for UBI is to finance it through VAT. Some 15 years ago there was a party in Belgium that lobbied for UBI and they calculated that VAT should increase from 21% to 33% to finance UBI.
The work is added value. That is how VAT works. Edit: I guess that if you're paying a salary to someone in your household staff who can repare the smartphone you only need to buy (and pay VAT on) the replacement glass. But I don't think this is what you meant. I think that you just don't understand how VAT works. If you bring your phone to a repair shop in Belgium the 21% VAT will be applied on the whole bill, parts…
For the proverbial repair shop, supplies cost 50€ and the repair costs 100€. 50€ is left to the repair shop.
In a country with 21% VAT, the supplier will be paid 60,50€, and the end client will have to pay 121€ for the repair.
The repair shop now owes 21 - 10,50 = 10,50€ in VAT to the tax authorities.
But the repair shop still has 50€!
Assuming we are in Belgium and all of the benefit is used to pay the salary, we will deduce 22% social security tax, then the repairer will have to pay his 50% income tax, so at the end the repairer receives around 20€ in net pay.
I am simplifying to the extreme in the hope that you get the idea.
You may be tempted to say that the end client paid 121€ from his salary, and 21€ is actually the tax. But this is the whole point! He will be more likely to pay 21€ VAT on the repair rather than 120€ VAT on a new iPhone. And repair shops there will be.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#87Catholic and other churches have a lot of money. Why not tax them?
It's unconstitutional, right there in first nine words of 1A, even before the free speech part. It's not that churches are excluded from taxation, it is that they are excluded from all effects of lawmaking because of religion. The laws made can only apply to non-church entities. You can apply building and safety and occupancy codes to the structure, you can apply income tax to the attendees, et c, but it says right o…
My understanding of the Establishment Clause is that its primary purpose, which is not obvious for a modern reader, was to prevent the government from "establishing" a state religion. [0]
So that means that the government is forbidden from making laws that favor a particular religion over others, not from making any laws that constrain or affect religious groups and institutions.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishment_Clause, from which, "The Establishment Clause is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation forcing an establishment of religion, broadly making it illegal for the government to promote theocracy or promote a specific religion with taxes."
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The work is added value. That is how VAT works. Edit: I guess that if you're paying a salary to someone in your household staff who can repare the smartphone you only need to buy (and pay VAT on) the replacement glass. But I don't think this is what you meant. I think that you just don't understand how VAT works. If you bring your phone to a repair shop in Belgium the 21% VAT will be applied on the whole bill, parts…
For the proverbial repair shop, supplies cost 50€ and the repair costs 100€. 50€ is left to the repair shop. In a country with 21% VAT, the supplier will be paid 60,50€, and the end client will have to pay 121€ for the repair. The repair shop now owes 21 - 10,50 = 10,50€ in VAT to the tax authorities. But the repair shop still has 50€! Assuming we are in Belgium and all of the benefit is used to pay the salary, we wi…
I have no idea what are you trying to show.
If
a) the customer pays 100+tax for the repair (which includes in this very simplified model 50+tax for the supplies and 50+tax for the value added by the repair shop)
and
b) the tax goes from 21% to 66%
then
c) the customer will pay 166 for the repair instead of 121.
That's what I said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26967392
I don't see how "work will be relatively cheaper". The VAT applies to everything.
(It's also confusing that you say that the benefit is used to pay the salaries, by the way. And if what you call "benefit" is used entirely to pay the salary then no corporate tax will be paid because the company will be losing money.)
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> congress (the source of laws) does not have the authority to make any laws that apply to religious establishments It's not obvious that this is what was meant by 1st amendment. Other interpretation is that congress simply can't make laws that apply exclusively to religious establishments. EDIT: I must add that the interpretation you mentioned is undoubtedly the "canonical" one in public's mind, so the situation is…
Quite the opposite. I think the layperson view is to read "respect" as in "Congress is not allowed to make laws favoring one religion over another". This interpretation would be compatible with taxing churches (as long as they are all taxed equally). It was certainly my view before I studied the topic. It turns out that congress is not allowed to legislate religious establishments at all.
If you studied the topic, then surely you're very familiar with what's written in the Wikipedia article on the Establishment Clause [0], which makes it very clear that its purpose is to prevent the government from establishing a state religion (including by favoring one religion over another), not to prevent it from making any laws that can affect religious institutions.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#90Catholic and other churches have a lot of money. Why not tax them?
Churches are not for profit and don't partake in the economy. At least the established European ones that have no membership dues and such.