Yes. This is how feudalism works.
Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
71–80 of 141 posts
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ It's not news that you don't pay taxes on invested assets you hold and don't sell.” Unless, of course, we’re talking about the only meaningful asset an average person might own -their house- then we tax its assessed value every year.
Property taxes fund local services and act as pressure for property to be put to productive use; they specifically exist so property isn’t used solely as a speculative investment. I’m not sure what a tax on general investment would do but discourage speculative investment in general.
Why? If you don't make any money you wouldn't pay any taxes. If you make a fortune you pay some taxes.
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pay 0% federal income taxes on my wealth; the same as everyone else.
By stressing "federal income taxes" I assume that you mean that there are local taxes on wealth. I do not know how it is in USA, but in most countries there are taxes on wealth, typically at least on houses, cars and land. Wherever I have seen the amount of those taxes, they were already too high in my opinion. Moreover, the inheritance taxes are also a kind of tax on wealth and they are also quite high in many place…
> However, I have seen too many cases when the introduction of taxes on wealth was justified as "tax for the rich", but in the actual law the taxation thresholds were so low that the taxes affected mostly the lower end of the middle class, not the really rich.
Don't be deluded. These taxes are targeting the middle-class and the upper-middle-class (which is considered the "rich").
The "very rich" like Bezos have most of their wealth in stocks. These stocks will considerably go down if you had a wealth tax, and as a result bring little tax income.
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, taxes exist to keep the middle class down, we should switch to a flat tax.
A flat tax on what? Income? Wealth? I’m not against the idea so long as we make it progressive at the very bottom (though I understand my motivations there are explicitly moral ).
Plus you get the fun of defining income.
Gross sales of some product? or do you get to deduct it's cost?
Is trading labor (for instance, two independent farmers helping each other) considered income?
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#75I'm a little baffled why there have been all these articles of this category recently. It's not news that you don't pay taxes on invested assets you hold and don't sell. That's how it works for everyone who invests their savings. This isn't a 'tax-avoidance' tactic - it's just what owning something is. Are we really advocating for a world where you are taxed just for appreciation? Maybe we are but at least be honest…
The recently proposed wealth taxes (e.g., Elizabeth Warren’s proposal) that work the way you’ve described would only start on wealth above $50 million. So your framing of such a tax as a way to steal from your working-class retirement funds is incredibly disingenuous. Unless, of course, you have 8+ figures of wealth. In which case I hope one day you’re made to pay your fair share to society.
Make the limit linked to income levels. Say 100 times the median income.
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. My favorite breakdown of this view is from David Mitchell [1] I am not sure what would happen economically if we started taxing all assets, non-income, etc... How much should people pay yearly on wedding rings, gold teeth, clothes, music collections? Would we have to itemize all possessions and have them assessed? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2q-Csk-ktc [potentially nsfw language]
Which begs the question, how happy are we with what is happening economically right now?
the presumption there is that the pain is caused by not taxing enough, instead of, say, subsidies for the rich, stealing the value out of people's income through inflation, etc.
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#77Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#78I'm a little baffled why there have been all these articles of this category recently. It's not news that you don't pay taxes on invested assets you hold and don't sell. That's how it works for everyone who invests their savings. This isn't a 'tax-avoidance' tactic - it's just what owning something is. Are we really advocating for a world where you are taxed just for appreciation? Maybe we are but at least be honest…
Previous discussion of this ProPublica story rightly pointed out that there was too much focus on billionaires (legally) not paying taxes while their assets are appreciating (but not yet sold), and not enough focus on the fact that often taxes aren't even eventually paid (a grey area mix of legal/illegal). From the original ProPublica article [0]: >It’s clear, though, from aggregate IRS data, tax research and what li…
Personally, I think if we're going to have a discussion on this, it ought to include some element of "why does the federal government keep getting more expensive at such an amazing rate?"
It's astonishing to me that (in constant dollar terms), the tax receipts of the federal government have doubled since the height of the Cold War in the 1980s and are three times what they were during the Apollo program. They are estimated to increase by another third in the next five years.
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ It's not news that you don't pay taxes on invested assets you hold and don't sell.” Unless, of course, we’re talking about the only meaningful asset an average person might own -their house- then we tax its assessed value every year.
Fair enough - however, what would the equivalent of this look like for invested assets? We are basically forced to sell to cover every year to pay taxes on accrued value?
Additional fun occurs when a government official stops by every year to take an inventory of household items.
Of course, there's always the problem that a lot of nominal asset appreciation is due to inflation.
Re: Wealthiest U.S. executives paid little to nothing in federal income taxes
#80I'm a little baffled why there have been all these articles of this category recently. It's not news that you don't pay taxes on invested assets you hold and don't sell. That's how it works for everyone who invests their savings. This isn't a 'tax-avoidance' tactic - it's just what owning something is. Are we really advocating for a world where you are taxed just for appreciation? Maybe we are but at least be honest…
I personally don’t understand what collecting more taxes will even do for us. We are unable to agree on what to spend it on, so what’s the point. There won’t be universal healthcare or free college, and we mostly just send the money to social security, Medicare and defense, and our albatross education system. Stop collecting more taxes until we know what we want to spend it on.