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We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

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Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#361

Post by ping_pong »

teachingassist wrote: post #334
TimPC wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that it hurts the sheep as well, it's that it hurts the sheep almost entirely. Raising capital gains would be a decent idea that forces the rich to pay more. Basically zero support for it. Closing loopholes helps too, not what we're seeing in tax policy discussions which focus on rates instead. Raising the top rate on income when most of the ultra-rich's money comes from investment isn't making sens…

> Basically zero support for it. Wealth taxes are extremely well-supported, despite the media as an industry [and politicians] being owned by people strongly motivated to campaign against it all costs, e.g.: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-p...

Wealth taxes don't work. It was tried in Europe in many countries and they ended up rolling them back.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#362

Post by fennecfoxen »

Spooky23 wrote: post #288
whiddershins wrote: post #92

Every time someone tries to make a tax targeting the ultra rich, it ends up hurting the moderately wealthy instead. Every. Single. Time. The worse tax situation is always the person who makes 500k in a good year, or sells a house they held for 25 years which went up a bunch in value. I suspect this is a significant factor in social mobility. Our tax system is punitive to people who try to leave the working class.

My giving a shit about household capital gains went away when a partisan congress decided to buy redneck votes with punitive SALT rollback.

SALT deductions are a massive tax break for the wealthy. Your own partisanship that would see them restored is just as powerful, and the tax policy you advocate here is more regressive.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#363

Post by alok-g »

mlac wrote: post #24

I would really just like a flat tax. No loopholes or deductions. Very simple. It should not take a masters degree to understand the tax code. I recognize this is one of the main ways Policy is implemented (incentives can drive certain behavior), but we’ve got hundreds of years of complexity going on and I wouldn’t mind simplifying this. I don’t know where to start though.

I would like to have discussions even for "constant" tax.

Wrote more in the comments below:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27434369

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27434819

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#364

Post by alok-g »

pmoriarty wrote: post #100
silicon2401 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, at least not with so simple an implementation. I don't want to live in a world where we're unable to escape working by constant taxes. There should be at least a minimum threshold where wealth is completely untaxed so that people can live freely and not have to work until they die. Enough for a house, some property and land, and a retirement fund. I'd consider it more justifiable to tax someone like Bill…

"I don't want to live in a world where we're unable to escape working by constant taxes." I am against a system in which some escape work while others do not.

So no one ever retires?

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#365

Post by whakim »

nostrademons wrote: post #268
cletus wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worse tax situation is always the person who makes 500k in a good year What's the problem here? Income tax rates are moderately progressive. They'll pay a higher marginal tax rate and a moderately higher total tax rate in this year. That seems fine to me. > or sells a house they held for 25 years which went up a bunch in value This is what I have a problem with. This house has already had plenty of favourable t…

The issue, if I'm understanding the OP right, is that income taxes are moderately progressive until you get to the levels where people make their living off wealth, not income . Someone earning a wage is going to pay a monotonically increasing percentage of their income as they move up the scale. That's fine. Someone who owns a holding company that itself owns 80% interests in a variety of LLCs that reinvest their pr…

This is correct. Piketty's research has shown that as one moves to progressively higher echelons of the wealth distribution (top 5%, top 0.1%, top 0.01%), a higher and higher proportion of capital is accumulated through returns on capital rather than income. That being said, we shouldn't discount that while taxes on income are more progressive than taxes on wealth, they're still significantly less progressive than those of most other Western countries (and we have significantly higher levels of income inequality compared to those countries.)

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#366

Post by weaksauce »

TimPC wrote: post #271
ineptech wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're describing an obstacle to change, you're describing the mechanism of change avoidance. Compare: "Gosh, every time we try to tax the wolves, it ends up hurting the sheep as well. Why can't our 100% wolf, 0% sheep Congress get this right? I guess it's just a hard problem!" The solution is not to give up, the solution is to actually tax the rich more. Also, your examples are awful: paying taxes on t…

The problem isn't that it hurts the sheep as well, it's that it hurts the sheep almost entirely. Raising capital gains would be a decent idea that forces the rich to pay more. Basically zero support for it. Closing loopholes helps too, not what we're seeing in tax policy discussions which focus on rates instead. Raising the top rate on income when most of the ultra-rich's money comes from investment isn't making sens…

I think the only thing that would solve almost all the issues is taxing the movement of money in all forms at a small rate. there have been some thoughts on it by people smarter than I but the gist is you tax money every time it moves at a tiny percentage rate. the rate is so small that for the commoners are not affected much but the people that trade money or move money off shore or buy up large commodities would be the ones that pay the most. I'm sure there are some downsides to it but there are many upsides too.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#367

Post by alok-g »

naasking wrote: post #43
mlac wrote: post #24

I would really just like a flat tax. No loopholes or deductions. Very simple. It should not take a masters degree to understand the tax code. I recognize this is one of the main ways Policy is implemented (incentives can drive certain behavior), but we’ve got hundreds of years of complexity going on and I wouldn’t mind simplifying this. I don’t know where to start though.

Flat tax is too regressive. What seems justified is a basic S-curve indexed by income, and where the left hand side dips below zero so those below a certain line effectively get a negative income tax to maintain a certain standard of living.

Care to explain why? :-)

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#368

Post by marcell »

fastball wrote: post #270

So lots of people saying the ultra rich are hard to tax because they take out loans against assets to fund the day-to-day. This then results in an argument about the morality/viability/etc of a wealth tax. But... why can't we just tax the loans?

If you tax loans that means every credit card purchase or mortgage would trigger a tax. If you receive a $400k loan for a mortgage, that would mean something like $100k in taxes for an upper middle earner.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#369

Post by teachingassist »

ping_pong wrote: post #361
teachingassist wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically zero support for it. Wealth taxes are extremely well-supported, despite the media as an industry [and politicians] being owned by people strongly motivated to campaign against it all costs, e.g.: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-p...

Wealth taxes don't work. It was tried in Europe in many countries and they ended up rolling them back.

First, this is not true. I live in a country in Europe and I paid a wealth tax today, in fact.

Second, please re-read my comment above as to why you might have understood that.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#370

Post by repiret »

MR4D wrote: post #234
iso1631 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of those will be in retirement plans which I assume aren't taxed?

> which I assume aren't taxed? It depends on which kind of retirement account. Might be in Roths and Roths-401Ks which are taxed when the money goes in (treated as regular income), or IRAs and regular 401Ks which are taxed as regular income when the money comes out.

But neither Roth nor Traditional 401k/403b/457/IRA are subject to capital gains tax.
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