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Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
241–250 of 332 posts
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are making $400k in California, in places where you are likely to make that much, quite a lot of that is going to taxes and expenses. Sure, you might be able to save $2M over a decade, which makes you well off for sure, but "rich" is a bit of a stretch when all it affords you is paying a mortgage on a mid-century formerly middle-class house vaguely within commuting distance. Calling that lifestyle "rich" just…
This is a staggering lack of perspective. The average American takes around ten years to make that amount of money. Tell them at the end of the year you’re going to give them the next nine years of paychecks as a Christmas bonus and then ask them if they feel financially independent.
This is a bizarre take. The average American is more likely to live in the equivalent of Flyover, Kansas than Sunnyvale, California. I've lived in both, more the former than the latter. I'm sure the person living in Sunnyvale would love to pay $55k for a nice brick two-story house (current price for one I grew up in) but that doesn't seem to be an option in Sunnyvale.
Tell that hypothetical average American to buy a mediocre house in Sunnyvale and see what reaction you get.
Nobody cares what lifestyle $400k can buy in Mississippi because very few people are making that much in a locale that cheap.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes, and I get fucked hard, and not in fun way. And predictably, the responses are whether or not you are actually middle class. Because somehow if you're not, you deserve to be f**d hard I guess...?
These taxes affect people who are making $400k+, so yeah, they can handle paying more taxes.
Otherwise known as "the people who employ and invest".
In the same way corporate taxes trickle down to the consumer (otherwise known as "everybody else"), the same is true of taxes on wealthy incomes.
And even our discussion over who pays taxes and how much they pay is moot since the problem is actually spending. The best thing that could happen is that everyone has a real tax burden and everyone pays it directly (not via payroll deduction). Because then more people might be interested in how their taxes are being spent.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
More than 1% of US households (something like 1.5M households with a total of ~3M people) have >$10M in household net worth. The primary target is that class, irrespective of its members’ earned income, in part because they can reliably earn mid-six-figures per year in returns to capital alone. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/22/the-number...
Great, but there are many more mid-six-figure earners who don't have >$10M in household net worth. And if you tax mid-six-figure earners, you get them, too. If you want to target wealth over $10M, tax wealth over $10M .
Wealth taxes are the real answer here, and for that reason they are unlikely to happen in the anglosphere unless there is some major political shift. In fact the United States does the opposite of a wealth tax, by taxing capital gains at a lower rate than regular income. Because the ruling class gets essentially all of their income from capital gains, they don't actually care about the tax rate on regular income. They can support progressive income taxes as a form of left-wing posturing, or as a way to pit high- and low-income workers against each other, knowing that the taxes won't hurt them. Raising the capital gains tax rate (even just to match the regular income tax rate) is never seriously discussed, and any suggestion of a wealth tax is completely out of the question.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
for the same reason i believe that entertainment companies should have reasonable prices/practices if they don't want me to pirate movies, governments should keep taxes low if they want the rich to pay them.
I don't think we should count on the rich to not try to find loopholes anyway while keeping their taxes low. I'm pretty sure they would do so whether their taxes are low or not. Trying to stay on their good side hoping they will "do the right thing and pay more taxes", won't really make that much of a difference.
it's a bell curve, taxes too low and govt doesn't make enough, taxes too high and people are disincentivized to pay taxes, invest, start businesses, etc.
> won't really make that much of a difference
is that you hunch or you have data? I remember seeing the bell curve in an undergrad business class.
I'd imagine a 20% vs 45% tax will absolutely have different outcomes.
If someone is already dodging taxes then they will probably continue but the next generation of millionaires should never start.
That's why I think it's related to pirating movies, it's a similar dynamic.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being a software engineer in a EU country, you're definitely not a classically rich person. In USA, maybe? In EU not so much. There's so many professions (quite common at that) that earn more, or even much more than us.
Why aren’t software engineers valued more in EU?
it's only the US (AFAIK) that pays developers so highly, and even then it's primarily in cities and companies amenable to venture capital. It's not about how valued the career is, it's about how profitable it is - and when you can take 10s or 100s of millions in investment to build a software platform using a couple dozen devs, it becomes pretty clear why they're paid so high in those areas.
I value the service of my local council's binmen more than most developers' output (including my own). Doesn't mean they get paid the big bucks.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. What is your definition of "middle class"? Someone making $400k is most certainly in the top 1%. What tax changes have occurred so far in the past few decades that are significantly affecting you? I would genuinely like to know
The fact that there are people making 10,000 times as much as the highest bracket in a single year suggests whoever is proposing these tax laws does not actually want to solve the problem. There should be brackets going up to a billion dollars, adjusted every time someone makes an order of magnitude more than the highest bracket. Also, making 400K does not make you rich. In California, you are actually bringing home…
I see multiple people in this thread talking about high taxes without knowing how tax brackets actually work in reality. I wish people understood them. It's very easy to senationalize high taxes.
I'll make up some numbers to make it simple. Let's say there's 2 brackets. Everyone who makes under $399,999.99 pays 0% tax. And everyone who makes over $400k pays 90% tax. You make $400k. How much do you owe the taxman? Did you know it's only 90 pennies out of $400k? The first $399,999.99 you make is in the 0% bracket. It will always be taxed at that rate. Only the amount over that ($1) will be taxed in the next bracket.
Now in reality, we have 7 tax brackets. This is how much you really pay, assuming filing single for 2020.
$9875 of $400k @ 10%
$30,250 of $400k @ 12%
$45,399 of $400k @ 22%
$77,775 of $400k @ 24%
$44,049 of $400k @ 32%
$192,649 of $400k @ 35%
You wouldn't even make enough to pay anything into the 7th bracket @ 37%.
Personally, I believe yes, we need to raise taxes on the uber rich just to slow their growth. NO, it will not affect you who make $400k (which is already wealthy compared to most of America!) And add more brackets while we're at it. There was a time in America where the uber rich had a 94% tax bracket. I'm not saying we need to go that high. But 37% and too many deductions is a joke.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#248That's why i'm against high taxes. We get a bunch of random political parties, promising to "tax the rich" and stuff, we get new laws... and what happens? - The poor already pay very little tax - no change there - The rich avoid the tax by doing shady stuff (who remembers the panama papers.. or this.. or many other stories like these) - I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes, and I get fucked hard, and…
That's because "tax the rich" usually begins and ends with income taxes. More creativity, such as a financial transaction tax, increased capital gains taxes, or a wealth tax paired with capital controls, would let us capture more from the big boys and less from the high earning engineer/small business owner.
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that there are people making 10,000 times as much as the highest bracket in a single year suggests whoever is proposing these tax laws does not actually want to solve the problem. There should be brackets going up to a billion dollars, adjusted every time someone makes an order of magnitude more than the highest bracket. Also, making 400K does not make you rich. In California, you are actually bringing home…
Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.
Except the tax code doesn’t care if that was a one time thing vs something that actually does happen for 10 years.
If you make $50k plus COLA for your entire career but one year your stock options materialize and pay $400k, are you rich?
Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on. The ultra-rich don’t pay their fair share. You know this and everyone knows this. Wealth inequality is obscene. Full stop.
In America, the top 1% has 20% of the income, but pays almost 40% of the taxes. What is their 'fair share'? What is your fair share of someone else's income? Countries like Norway or Sweden, which have more billionaires per capita than the USA have much less progressive tax codes.
I think the key word there is "income" - At some point income barely plays a role.