So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
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So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
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Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#2If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. Eliminate income taxes including capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes are at a laughable rate anyways.
Income taxes primarily tax the upper middle class not the rich or poor who either make no employment income or an insufficient amount.
Everybody buys things though. To be fair to the poor eliminate food and water from sales taxes, which are not candy and soda. To be fair to everybody else eliminate deductions.
Wealthy people who throw away money NFTs for $50 million should be charged a sales tax just as poor people who thrown away $100 per month on television packages. The argument against sales taxes is that they are a barrier to transaction frequency which is the heart of economic health, but they would cover everybody far more fairly. The only escape is to not purchase things.
For most people wealth is tied to property, but just about everybody pays property taxes even if they don’t own property. For renters the expense of property taxes is indirectly passed to them as a basis of the rent. Higher property taxes burden more expensive property owners (and renters) disproportionately so it does tax the wealthy more, but not that much more since those expenses are redistributed in various ways through costs of living.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#3If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. Eliminate income taxes including capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes are at a laughable rate anyways. Income taxes primarily tax the upper middle class not the rich or poor who either make no employment income or an insufficient amount. Everybody buys things though. To be fair to the poor e…
> If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes
Why not the other way around? If you can't sell but can hold - people will hold and rent to others. We all played monopoly and know what the endgame is, right?
If you want to tax the rich simply tax the rich - let's say 5% tax on any property over 1 000 000 USD.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#4If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. Eliminate income taxes including capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes are at a laughable rate anyways. Income taxes primarily tax the upper middle class not the rich or poor who either make no employment income or an insufficient amount. Everybody buys things though. To be fair to the poor e…
Are you sure that you are thinking on a system that is fair to everyone and not just what is best for you? The core idea of taxes is that, to try and devise a system fair to everyone. The current system is not.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#5If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. Eliminate income taxes including capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes are at a laughable rate anyways. Income taxes primarily tax the upper middle class not the rich or poor who either make no employment income or an insufficient amount. Everybody buys things though. To be fair to the poor e…
Sales taxes aren't a particularly balanced way of taxation.
Someone living paycheck to paycheck essentially spends all of their income, which means that they pay the full amount of sales tax possible for someone with that income. Compared to someone saving or investing who doesn't pay as much tax as they could.
A little simplified because sales taxes typically don't apply to things like rent, but the point still stands.
The best way to tax the "rich" is normally a wealth tax – taxing the retained wealth rather than income or outgoings (sales tax). This could be a direct wealth tax, a property tax, inheritance tax, all sorts of options but they all have similar effects, outsized on the rich, small on the poor.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#6If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. Eliminate income taxes including capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes are at a laughable rate anyways. Income taxes primarily tax the upper middle class not the rich or poor who either make no employment income or an insufficient amount. Everybody buys things though. To be fair to the poor e…
This is very backwards. As percentage of income poor people pay more than rich. If you want to tax über wealthy just tax wealth directly (let’s say 3% on all US citizens and residents on all things values above $10mil).
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#7If people really wanted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. Eliminate income taxes including capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes are at a laughable rate anyways. Income taxes primarily tax the upper middle class not the rich or poor who either make no employment income or an insufficient amount. Everybody buys things though. To be fair to the poor e…
> If people really want anted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes.
No, if people really wanted to tax the rich, it wouldn’t be by consumption taxes, as the rich have a lower marginal propensity to consume. That makes as much sense as taxing the rich via progressive income taxes, but making capital gains taxed at a lower top marginal rate with a less-progressive structure and labor income subject to special additional taxes. Both are tax-the-rich theater.
If you want to tax the rich, use a progressive income tax and also:
(1) treat capital income as normal income, not some specially favored category.
(2) treat gifts and inheritances received as normal income, not some special category with exemptions that no non-rich person will ever exhaust.
(3) treat labor income as normal income, not some special disfavored category with additional taxes on both the recipient and the provider of the income.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#8These endowment funds seems like an excellent idea to evade taxes. And a couple of years ago Harvard endowment fund has totally stopped their financial disclosure.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#9"... crimp spending on student aid or faculty research, but wealthy individuals can make the same argument: Higher taxes would reduce the amount of money they can invest in tech start-ups or other economically productive ventures."
Clearly this is not the same argument at all. Student aid, and academic research are not the same as funding a startup.
The difference is that colleges, or large grant-making foundations provide, and even exist, for the public good, rather than private profit.
They should perhaps be forced to use more of the wealth for grants, to support poor students, etc, but that's not the same argument as that they should be charged the same taxes as ultra-wealthy idividuals.
Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard
#10"... crimp spending on student aid or faculty research, but wealthy individuals can make the same argument: Higher taxes would reduce the amount of money they can invest in tech start-ups or other economically productive ventures." Clearly this is not the same argument at all. Student aid, and academic research are not the same as funding a startup. The difference is that colleges, or large grant-making foundations p…
We already have a method for determining what to spend money on for the public good. Why have a parallel method that gives only rough guidelines to private, unelected parties?
If people want to donate money to charity, they ought to donate their own money not foregone taxes.