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Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

bloomberg.com

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Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#121

Post by simongray »

egman_ekki wrote: post #24
jonatron wrote: post #7

Not mentioned is that Denmark has the OECD's lowest inequality. Having visited a couple of times, it does feel like they're doing something right.

Lowest income inequality. Highest wealth inequality (Zimbabwe level)... not sure if that is the right way to go, though...

That's a fair point. The wealth inequality is high because a lot of people rent rather than buy housing and because savings are less important with the Danish level of cradle-to-grave government services. A lot of things that you would need savings for in other countries come in the form of welfare services instead.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#122

Post by simongray »

EJTH wrote: post #32

As a dane I can tell you the headline is a lie, almost everyone I know thinks that we pay way too much for the mediocre services we get.

Yes, of course your anecdote is true and the poll the headline is based on must be lying. My own personal anecdote is that everyone around me thinks the tax level is appropriate and that they are sad whenever the government wants to lower taxes.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#123

Post by robk »

pjc50 wrote: post #62
atemerev wrote: post #10

In other countries, taxes are complicated (no citation needed). There's income tax, but there are also social security payments, industry-specific taxes, etc. And you have to pay for your own education and healthcare! Danish tax is simple and all inclusive. It is around 50%, which is about the same as in US if all hidden obligatory payments are taken into account. But it is all inclusive: all education and healthcare…

British system: tax and social security deducted by employer. Council sends you an annual bill vaguely related to the value of your home, paid over 10 months. Healthcare free at the point of use, apart from the £7 prescription charge in England. I was in my mid-30s before I had to file a tax return, and that's only because I'd set up a limited company. The Inland Revenue (HMRC) can be nasty, but nowhere near as nasty…

Free healthcare at the point of use won't survive in the long term. Too little funding and too much use. There's no negative externality from people abusing it.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#124

Post by sharemywin »

hedgew wrote: post #35

I'm not in Denmark but in a very similar European country. I don't want the high taxes. The current taxes and mandatory payments feel unfair. The generations before us worked during the greatest economic boom in history, were mostly employed in safe and high paying government jobs (still are), bought houses before their values tripled, and are now receiving monthly pension payments that are almost twice what most you…

But the problem is a lot of them paid in already. so, should someone that worked 40 years for a system get screwed out of all the money they put in? I don't have a good answer.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#125

Post by dv_dt »

vidarh wrote: post #83
atemerev wrote: post #10

In other countries, taxes are complicated (no citation needed). There's income tax, but there are also social security payments, industry-specific taxes, etc. And you have to pay for your own education and healthcare! Danish tax is simple and all inclusive. It is around 50%, which is about the same as in US if all hidden obligatory payments are taken into account. But it is all inclusive: all education and healthcare…

> It is around 50% No, it isn't. The total tax wedge under OECD definitions, which includes employer payroll taxes, the Danish income tax burden is on average around 38%. Excluding employers payroll taxes it's around 36%. For comparison, the "all in" number for the US is around 31%. The OECD average is 36%. The only OECD country that crosses the 50% mark is Belgium, which consistently is one of the highest tax countr…

If you fully load the per-capita US healthcare costs to that 31% and make it a closer comparison based on services received, I would guess the US percentage will go much higher than the Danish tax burden.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#126

Post by pjc50 »

robk wrote: post #123
pjc50 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British system: tax and social security deducted by employer. Council sends you an annual bill vaguely related to the value of your home, paid over 10 months. Healthcare free at the point of use, apart from the £7 prescription charge in England. I was in my mid-30s before I had to file a tax return, and that's only because I'd set up a limited company. The Inland Revenue (HMRC) can be nasty, but nowhere near as nasty…

Free healthcare at the point of use won't survive in the long term. Too little funding and too much use. There's no negative externality from people abusing it.

I think this is a myth being put around by private healthcare providers. The overall cost is not too high - it's much cheaper than the US system - and the main users are the elderly. I'm also not sure what constitutes "abuse" of the system; it's not like people enjoy being in hospital.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#127

Post by badsock »

hedgew wrote: post #35

I'm not in Denmark but in a very similar European country. I don't want the high taxes. The current taxes and mandatory payments feel unfair. The generations before us worked during the greatest economic boom in history, were mostly employed in safe and high paying government jobs (still are), bought houses before their values tripled, and are now receiving monthly pension payments that are almost twice what most you…

Wait, you've got it backwards. At the risk of stating the obvious: the wealthy older generation are the ones who want the tax cuts for the wealthy. In a progressive taxation scheme the young and poor get more benefits from the government than they pay in via taxes, so what you're arguing for would hurt you and help them.

The real problem is that assets are taxed (sometimes significantly) less than income. We're in a world where assets are becoming much more valuable than labour, but have a taxation and pension scheme that is built for the opposite (post-WWII).

The older generation has assets like houses and stocks. Youth have the ability to work. Here in Canada, the capital gains tax is literally half of what the income tax is. So when old people make their money (house prices go up, investment portfolios increase) while literally not lifting a finger, they get to shift half of their tax burden onto the people that get up every morning and work for a living. /That's/ unfair.

This is all happening in a time when we've got so much cash floating around that interest rates might go negative, which means the usual "oh, but if we tax assets then it will reduce the available investment pool and it will hurt the economy" is complete self-serving horseshit.

Taxes are one of your biggest tools for redressing the screwing over that the younger generation has got. You'd be crazy to consider them the problem. Furthermore, with pensions the older generation basically wrote themselves a blank cheque that the younger generation had to pay. I don't think we should feel obligated to follow it to the letter - and that doesn't have anything to do with tax rates, that's just a contract re-negotiation.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#128

Post by ekianjo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #13
hanspeter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unreasonable but so far unobserved. Any initiatives to reduce costs seem to increase an even costlier bureaucracy. /generalization

Also if services are getting cheaper then there's a question of why the money isn't reinvested to make those services better for the same price?

Or you know, reduce taxes. Why do you need to keep the fiscal pressure if you can be more efficient ?

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#129

Post by ekianjo »

pjc50 wrote: post #17
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying its unreasonable for services to become less costly over time ?

No silver bullets + Baumol Cost Disease + greater expectations = very unlikely that services will become cheaper. Someone promising to make public services much cheaper should be treated like someone offering to sell you a $10 Rolex. It's either fraud or theft. God help you if someone tries to sell you a computer system to improve public services, that needs very careful management (18F, GDS, not Capita and friends)…

> Someone promising to make public services much cheaper should be treated like someone offering to sell you a $10 Rolex.

That's what we do in the private industry the whole time. We try to improve processes, reduce wasteful behaviors, improve our efficiency and ultimately try to offer better services and products, while competing on value vs other competitors.

I don't see any reason why such a way of thinking would not be applicable to the public sector.

My experience of the public sector is rather the exact opposite: they have way too many civil servants for the work they do, and could benefit in simplifying/streamlining their processes to cut down costs significantly and at the same time improve their services.

> Besides, when redistribution is a goal in itself, it's a mistake to talk purely about cost and you have to look at outcomes.

That's a naive view. There is a lot of waste in the "processing" of redistribution.

Re: Most Danish voters oppose government plans to cut the top rate of income tax

#130

Post by ekianjo »

tobltobs wrote: post #29
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying its unreasonable for services to become less costly over time ?

Most obvious straw man I have seen on HN for a long time. After reading the parent for three times I could not find anyzhing which would imply that he did saying anything implying this.

Nope. Extract that was far from just being factual:

> Danes are smart enough to accept that it has to be paid for.

This was clearly an opinion about the matter at hand.

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