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Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

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Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#71

Post by yokaze »

spwa4 wrote: post #68
yokaze wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Spain if you earn more than 60k you are considered rich. No, you are high earner. It puts you squarely in the top 10%.

60k euro per year in a city like Barcelona or Madrid does not make you wealthy. Not remotely. And in the other cities rent might be better, but jobs are a lot harder to find too. 60k euro gives you 33k after tax (2800 euro per month), and everything you do with that is taxed at minimum another 25% (that's the VAT)

The numbers are simply wrong. The VAT is 21% tops and in the highest taxed region the 60K are effectively taxed at 32%.

And you miss the point that wealth is not determined by how much you earn, but how much you have.

Various super rich are nominally earning one dollar/euro.

I know doctors that have trouble finding a flat and others that complain about being classified as big renter because they only have six flats. The discriminator is not the income. (When we talk about the Ultra-Rich).

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#72

Post by clickety_clack »

jjav wrote: post #69
clickety_clack wrote: post #23

I don’t agree with wealth taxes. The ultra wealthy will find the ways to avoid them and it will end up disproportionately landing on the middle class like everything else. If it has to be done, it should be at the sources of the wealth so that they can’t be dodged. Things like property taxes, corporate taxes, taxation of stock buybacks (which is a way to pay dividends without paying income tax on them). The middle cl…

> The ultra wealthy will find the ways to avoid them That is only because the system (at least in the US) is designed specifically to enable this. Tax code is mind boggingly complex because there are a million loopholes and special cases, so that if you can afford the top-tier accountants, you won't ever pay any taxes. But there is nothing inherently necessary about this. We can know the net worth of people and tax t…

The wealth of the ultra rich isn’t sitting in a checking account or a Robinhood trading account. There’s a lot of it in stuff that’s lying around and most likely it’s not even all in the country. Wealth isn’t sitting in a global database that can be queried.

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#73

Post by spwa4 »

yokaze wrote: post #71
spwa4 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60k euro per year in a city like Barcelona or Madrid does not make you wealthy. Not remotely. And in the other cities rent might be better, but jobs are a lot harder to find too. 60k euro gives you 33k after tax (2800 euro per month), and everything you do with that is taxed at minimum another 25% (that's the VAT)

The numbers are simply wrong. The VAT is 21% tops and in the highest taxed region the 60K are effectively taxed at 32%. And you miss the point that wealth is not determined by how much you earn, but how much you have . Various super rich are nominally earning one dollar/euro. I know doctors that have trouble finding a flat and others that complain about being classified as big renter because they only have six flats.…

> And you miss the point that wealth is not determined by how much you earn, but how much you have.

That IS my point. Earning is how you become wealthy. That is heavily taxed, because it's easy for the government to do. These taxes prevent anyone becoming wealthy.

They are, however, protecting people that already are wealthy. Cross the threshold where you make more from owning stuff than from income and Spanish taxes look a whole lot better, because you can determine yourself how much income you have. In other words: you only pay tax on the income you actually use for living. Any income used for wealth-building is not taxed (acquiring the actual assets still is but 20% in the worst case. Also investment gains are not taxed, if you structure things right). Cross the next threshold: where you wealth not only pays for living but actually lets you acquire more assets and it's even better. For that ("reinvestment") you pay ZERO percent taxes on the money used to grow your assets.

The very wealthy get richer in Spain. You just can never join them.

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#74

Post by AntronX »

jjav wrote: post #70
AntronX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? This may explain low salaries in EU and 30 day PTO. Then if people don't make a lot they have to tax them more to pay for all this free stuff which further disincentivizes working harder.

> Then why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? Isn't the answer obvious? So that you can afford cool things that you want. There needs to be a baseline of minimum services everyone gets (health care, education, food). If you want anything beyond that, like a nice house, nice car, nice toys, travel, etc. then that's the motivation to work harder.

With 70% effective marginal tax rate at >60k all those cool things become 3x more expensive in time invested because you only keep 30% of your labor input above that amount. IDK about you buy I would not work for that.

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#75

Post by bigbadfeline »

xienze wrote: post #25
JimBlackwood wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a long way between NW >100 million and making 60K EUR. Maybe if they taxed NW >100 million, you wouldn’t need a 50% tax on work.

> Maybe if they taxed NW >100 million, you wouldn’t need a 50% tax on work. Don't be mistaken, it's an "in addition to" tax, not "instead of", or else it wouldn't be pitched as one of many ways to plug a budget hole.

Any "addition to tax" should still be a tax.

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#76

Post by nradov »

neerd wrote: post #40
LaurensBER wrote: post #30

> Europe’s Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU’s Budget > Taxes on wealth, crypto and financial trades could raise billions no single member state can collect alone. The sad reality is that as soon as the EU introduces this, these families won't be Europe's Ultra Rich anymore. They'll soon be the UK/Swiss/Dubai/Israel/US Ultra Rich. What the EU needs is: - Less bureaucracy - One capital market - More v…

> The sad reality is that as soon as the EU introduces this, these families won't be Europe's Ultra Rich anymore. They'll soon be the UK/Swiss/Dubai/Israel/US Ultra Rich. Yeah, but the physical assets they own can’t move freely. The EU can still tax or seize assets within the EU.

OK, and then what happens when the money runs out? EU bureaucrats might be able to seize existing wealth but they don't know how to set policies that create new wealth. Rather the opposite.

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#77

Post by jjav »

AntronX wrote: post #74
jjav wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? Isn't the answer obvious? So that you can afford cool things that you want. There needs to be a baseline of minimum services everyone gets (health care, education, food). If you want anything beyond that, like a nice house, nice car, nice toys, travel, etc. then that's the motivation to work harder.

With 70% effective marginal tax rate at >60k all those cool things become 3x more expensive in time invested because you only keep 30% of your labor input above that amount. IDK about you buy I would not work for that.

> IDK about you buy I would not work for that.

Sure you would. Well, I can't assert about you, but most people in that position would.

First, what is usually left out of this kind of discussion is how much work it takes to earn an extra dollar. At minimum wage every extra dollar is a lot of work, so every penny in taxes is a big hit.

When you're making say 1 million a year, every extra dollar takes very little thought or effort, so getting less of each is a non-issue in practice. And when you're making billions, each dollar is asymptotically close to zero effort, so even at a 99% tax rate you'd be getting an extra penny for zero effort, which isn't bad at all when you're getting millions of those pennies.

But, we don't need to keep this theoretical, we can simply look at history.

In 1980 top tax rate was indeed 70%, and that did not stop people from working at making lots of money, buying Ferraris and mansions and yachts. So we know from historical fact that it wouldn't stop the rich from riching. It just makes society a tiny bit more fair.

Re: Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget

#78

Post by jjav »

clickety_clack wrote: post #72
jjav wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ultra wealthy will find the ways to avoid them That is only because the system (at least in the US) is designed specifically to enable this. Tax code is mind boggingly complex because there are a million loopholes and special cases, so that if you can afford the top-tier accountants, you won't ever pay any taxes. But there is nothing inherently necessary about this. We can know the net worth of people and tax t…

The wealth of the ultra rich isn’t sitting in a checking account or a Robinhood trading account. There’s a lot of it in stuff that’s lying around and most likely it’s not even all in the country. Wealth isn’t sitting in a global database that can be queried.

> Wealth isn’t sitting in a global database that can be queried.

Palantir (and every government intelligence agency) has that global database and can query it at will.

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