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Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

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Re: Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

#71

Post by dpark »

satvikpendem wrote: post #69
dpark wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really especially for W2 employees as they have very few deductions Right. Individuals are taxed on income and not consumption. Taxes don’t go down if they save instead of spend (in fact they go up as they are taxed on the interest earned). There’s nothing about this that’s consumption based so a replacement system that looks basically the same but with more deductions is also not a consumption tax. Businesses…

Hence allowing individuals to not have income tax but instead have deductions based on consumption as that stimulates the economy.

I don’t know what this means. You’re hand waving “based on consumption”. There is no magic deduction that turns an income tax into a consumption tax.

Also you seem to have reversed your stance and are basing deductions on consumption. So the exact opposite of a consumption-based tax.

Re: Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

#72

Post by ieatcandlewax »

spwa4 wrote: post #65
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have expert consensus on what’s the best taxes, people just don’t like the answer: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... (“Three. Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people. Four. Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes disco…

This is easily defeated by fake companies. This only works if companies always work in the best interest of the economy. If someone were to create a company that sells doohickeys for profit AND to make sure one particular family is comfortable (ie. directly providing housing for them, servants, an "expense account", ...) that would defeat such a tax scheme. Systems are built on human behavior. Humans who spend entire…

This is something that happens right now and is currently known as "embezzlement". This will generally get you in trouble right now, so I can conceive of a world where it would get you in trouble.

I can imagine that some people would get away with it—but that's also kind of how the world works, some people will always game the system to their benefit like they do in every political system.

I think we're pretty far from devising a perfect system that is ungameable, so I don't see the point in devising scenarios where they are gamed.

A better metric imo for a tax system is seeing how much of the tax burden rests with people who work for wages vs people who own capital and comparing that to their proportion of the total wealth.

Re: Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

#73

Post by satvikpendem »

dpark wrote: post #71
satvikpendem wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence allowing individuals to not have income tax but instead have deductions based on consumption as that stimulates the economy.

I don’t know what this means. You’re hand waving “based on consumption”. There is no magic deduction that turns an income tax into a consumption tax. Also you seem to have reversed your stance and are basing deductions on consumption. So the exact opposite of a consumption-based tax.

Yeah, looks like I reversed it, my bad. But it's an interesting model, not taxing consumption at all but savings instead (not necessarily investment as something like a 401k would still be untaxed).

Re: Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

#74

Post by satvikpendem »

hollerith wrote: post #70
satvikpendem wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really especially for W2 employees as they have very few deductions. In contrast, I have an LLC for my work and I can pay basically zero tax by reinvesting it into business expenses (which are consumption like new office equipment or client meals) or even funneling it into my 401k. That's the model they mean, not the current W2 deduction model.

>That's the model they mean You have incorrectly summarized the position of Rayiner and me. Let us oversimplify and assume all spending by individuals is either consumption or investment. Rayiner and I advocated for taxing consumption, but leaving investment untaxed. (And then I suggested that a tax on consumption could be implemented as a tax on income where any spending on any investment is fully deductible.) You s…

You're right. I mentioned above but having the opposite of a consumption tax would be interesting, in that solely saving without consuming ie stimulating the economy via circulation of money would be what would be taxed, and investments remain untaxed.

Re: Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

#75

Post by astrange »

snovv_crash wrote: post #40
astrange wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt deleting income tax is a popular view among economists. Income and payroll taxes have the feature that you always have the money when it's time to pay the tax. That also means they're disinflationary. Whereas property taxes can be inflationary because they may require you to sell assets.

Georgism style property taxes are only due on the sale of the property so also have the money available then.

I thought the point of an LVT was to force land sales for more productive uses.

Re: Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

#76

Post by snovv_crash »

fyredge wrote: post #45
snovv_crash wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senate argument: "This poweryacht is necessary for my donor's livelihood of entertaining billionaires"

This argument kind of illustrates why consumption tax is better. It's easy to advocate "lower taxes for everyone!" giving rich people most of the benefit, but it's much harder to advocate for "lower yacht tax!" without pissing off a whole bunch of wage workers.

Have you seen the US tax code?
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