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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

#101

Post by Turing_Machine »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #45
DaedPsyker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it would, here is the full text concerning religion. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Part 2 would be the key aspect not part one. The question would be whether the free exercise is inhibited by tax on institutions or whether religion is intangible and separate from institutions and thus still free practice is available. I'…

I think an argument would be if a church did not pay its tax what would happen? If the church would be closed that would be in violation of the amendment. However I thought that it is not just that religions are not taxed, but rather that non-profits are not taxed and religions are just a special type of non-profit. on edit: wrote it's instead of its.

Using that argument, newspapers shouldn't have to pay taxes either. If a newspaper doesn't pay its taxes, it will be closed, which (according to this argument) would be a violation of the freedom of the press clause.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#102

Post by Turing_Machine »

danaris wrote: post #87
sneak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/Es…

You are correct. England has an established church, as does Scotland (but not the same one as England, interestingly). Wales used to have an established church, but it was "disestablished" in 1920. Other European countries have established churches as well.

Often this means that not only are they the official church, but that tax money is actually used to support them -- even tax money from people who don't belong to that church.

The Founders did not like paying taxes to churches they didn't belong to, and who can blame them for that?

Also interestingly, at the time the Constitution was enacted, some of the states did have established churches. The Constitution didn't do anything about that, as it only affected the Federal government.

The First Amendment has since been "incorporated" (by means of the Fourteenth Amendment) in such a way that states are also prohibited from establishing churches nowadays.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#103

Post by krapp »

ahD5zae7 wrote: post #80
krapp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent explicitly pointed out that religious organizations don't operate outside the law. If they did, literally every corporation and political party in the US would also establish itself as a religion. What Congress isn't allowed to do is pass a law stating "no religious organizations in the US are allowed to practice human sacrifice." But you still wouldn't be able to appease Xanakto the Moon God because Congr…

But not paying taxes on your income is illegal "in general". So one could interpret that as "all organisations should pay taxes if they have income"...

As I understand it, religious organizations have tax exempt status as non-profits under laws which also include educational and scientific institutions.

And, ironically, the reason religious organizations are included at all is the belief that taxing them would provide a means by which governments could interfere with religion in violation of the First Amendment.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#104

Post by yellowapple »

austincheney wrote: post #98
yellowapple wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in this case quite literally every tax other than maybe sin taxes are leaps and bounds better than a sales tax. Even terrible taxes like income and payroll taxes are vastly preferable to sales tax when it comes to not disproportionately hurting low-income households. If you want to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share, a sales tax is about as counterproductive as it gets. Tax things with inelastic supply th…

Judging from all the comments here people don’t know what they want. They claim to want fair but then they make a bunch of unfair exceptions for poor people. They claim to want to tax the wealthy but not unless it’s full of exceptions that ultimately benefit the wealthy. > are leaps and bounds better than a sales tax. Define better . What should be the goal of taxation in only a numerical and objective way? From most…

> What should be the goal of taxation in only a numerical and objective way?

To force the internalization of otherwise-externalized opportunity costs.

> From most of these comments the answer is something about land and wealth but void of any mention of taxable assets or specifically how to unfairly punish only certain persons.

From my comments in particular, the taxable assets would be things with inelastic supply, land being the most notable and prevalent and universally-understood example. Land ownership inherently externalizes opportunity costs onto every other individual member of society, so a tax on land ownership proportional to the rental value of that land (i.e. the value which can be derived from that land, and which others who would use that land are missing out on by being excluded from it - a.k.a. the opportunity cost thereof) would internalize those externalized costs, to everyone's benefit.

As for the "unfairly punish" part, none of what's proposed here is unfair at all. If you're going to claim an area of land for your own exclusive use, then it's only fair that you pay the rest of society your due rent.

That is, to distill the point here a bit: the idea is to penalize behaviors, not persons. For example, the behavior of hoarding land as an investment and speculating upon it is arguably one of the main drivers of skyrocketing housing costs, said costs being especially high for lower and middle class households relative to their income. Taxing the value of land penalizes hoarding land as an investment (indeed, it instead becomes a liability), thus resolving that particular housing cost driver and improving things considerably for the lower and middle classes.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#105

Post by dennis_jeeves »

tester34 wrote: post #16

just random thought is taxing very rich without hurting others possible?

No, because you cannot draw the line at who is rich.

Any tax based on wealth/income is fundamentally legalized (hence perfectly ethically acceptable to most morons) theft.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#106

Post by AnimalMuppet »

yellowapple wrote: post #60
cameronh90 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales taxes aren't the most balanced, but they are very easy to enforce and don't distort the economy very much. Standard wealth taxes are easy to avoid and have weird effects - but land value tax would probably be great. Unfortunately, people tend to vote against it.

> but land value tax would probably be great. Unfortunately, people tend to vote against it. Which is a shame, since it's about as ideal of a tax as you can get: - You can't move land to an offshore account - LVT penalizes land speculation, which is one of the main drivers of suburban sprawl and rising housing costs - It targets the rich, and marginally (if at all) impacts the lower and middle classes (replacing all…

> - It targets the rich, and marginally (if at all) impacts the lower and middle classes (replacing all taxes with LVT would almost certainly reduce middle class tax burdens and entirely eliminate lower class tax burdens)

The lower class still live somewhere. If you go to a land tax, their landlord isn't going to just eat that. It will be passed on to the renters.

- All economic activities ultimately depend on land in some way, so instead of taxing (and thus suppressing) those economic activities, it's ultimately more economically efficient to tax land itself

Here's a software-only startup that works fully remote. How does that economic activity depend on land? It doesn't, except for the workers' living places. But they'd still have living places even if they were unemployed.

But I kind of agree with your last paragraph. If you are going to go with a "land use" tax, well, Google owns some buildings with servers in them, but the most valuable thing they own is google.com.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#107

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tester34 wrote: post #16

just random thought is taxing very rich without hurting others possible?

I think so, to some degree. I start with the marginal utility of money - the first thousand dollars means a lot more to someone than the next thousand means to a billionaire. If you take a thousand from a billionaire, and give it to someone who currently has $0, that improves their life massively while hurting the billionaire only a tiny bit. So while it still "hurts others", it's still a massive net gain...

... until you get to second-order effects, where things get really complicated. If the rich have less money to invest in things, does that cut down on job creation? If so, is the tax a net win or a net loss?

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#108

Post by austincheney »

yellowapple wrote: post #72
austincheney wrote: post #36

Earlier 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…

> except landlords have to pass those expenses into rental prices if they wish to be in the green. Except they can't, because (barring artificial price ceilings like rent control) they're almost certainly already charging the optimal rent for maximum profit; if they could actually charge higher without losing money as a result, they already would have, property tax or no. The actual reason property tax increases rent…

> if they could actually charge higher without losing money as a result, they already would have

That’s not numerically correct. There are different market pressures on renters versus owners. A landlord can only charge what a renter is capable of paying regardless of taxes or value on the property. If a property ends up in the red because either the landlord cannot charge high enough rents or cannot find tenants they can always not renew the lease and sell the property where they may still earn a profit.

Also, high property taxes do not penalize development. I live in an area with high property taxes and it’s one of the fastest growing areas in the country for the last 20 years.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#109

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #101
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an argument would be if a church did not pay its tax what would happen? If the church would be closed that would be in violation of the amendment. However I thought that it is not just that religions are not taxed, but rather that non-profits are not taxed and religions are just a special type of non-profit. on edit: wrote it's instead of its.

Using that argument, newspapers shouldn't have to pay taxes either. If a newspaper doesn't pay its taxes, it will be closed, which (according to this argument) would be a violation of the freedom of the press clause.

good point, didn't think of that. but the second part still stands, that they don't pay taxes because they are non-profits.

Re: So you want to tax the rich? OK, let's start with Harvard

#110

Post by atat7024 »

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #105
tester34 wrote: post #16

just random thought is taxing very rich without hurting others possible?

No, because you cannot draw the line at who is rich. Any tax based on wealth/income is fundamentally legalized (hence perfectly ethically acceptable to most morons) theft.

So Americans in the 50s were at their most moronic?

Apart from the obvious social considerations...this doesn't seem correct.

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