Taxation is theft.
Counterpoint, taxation is the money you pay to the corporation called the USA for the ability to work and live in land they own. They then use that money to make the land more appealing attracting more occupants.
When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
91–100 of 229 posts
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#92I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece: The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways. Tax income more, they'll take it as dividends. Tax dividends more, they'll take it as capital gains. Tax capital gains, they won't realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they'll just get bank loans again't their stock holding…
That's like saying it will always be possible to murder someone so there is no point in trying to curb chemical weapons sales to children. Every loop closed makes tax evasion harder and riskier. There will always be people who do it, like there will always be people killing other people, but it is worth making it hard and risky enough that most people will consider other solutions before resorting to murder/tax evasi…
The point you are missing about these loopholes, is that broader strategies are mostly indistinguishable from "legitimate" usage of the same strategy. Wealth allows people to take more risk, and will/can do so... even at the risk of not having the money go to taxes. That is what you have to "solve"...
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like saying it will always be possible to murder someone so there is no point in trying to curb chemical weapons sales to children. Every loop closed makes tax evasion harder and riskier. There will always be people who do it, like there will always be people killing other people, but it is worth making it hard and risky enough that most people will consider other solutions before resorting to murder/tax evasi…
Tax evasion is illegally not paying the taxes that are due. If you are taking advantages of legal loopholes, it is not tax evasion.
With principles based legislation you can introduce rules that make it illegal to find "creative" ways only to circumvent restrictions. These rules already exist for anti money laundering and terrorism financing.
The problem is that changes also always affect some of the non-rich. You'll never manage to tailor laws so that everyone is hit exactly as desired.
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
A flat tax rate is not a good idea whatsoever; if you tax e.g. 20% of earnings ,do you believe people who earn $30k a year are impacted the same way as people earning $200k or more? Sure, those who earn more pay more, but it hits them in "extra" earnings, while the poor are taxed on money they need to survive. A (very) progressive tax rate with a few ways of reducing the tax based on social (e.g. number of children,…
How about a flat tax rate, but have essential goods be tax free?
That seems like an income tax mixed with a sales tax credit? It sounds awkward because income tax comes out of your paycheck but the sales tax is applied at the point of sale. You'd have income tax withheld, buy food with the money you have left over, get credited for the essential goods you bought, then pay rent, then get a credit for that...
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could tax holdings in the US or by US citizens instead of earnings, then. Make it expensive to hold capital. Capital in motion and at a high velocity is generally good for everyone. Capital at rest serves very few and is very harmful to everyone else.
> Capital in motion and at a high velocity is generally good for everyone. Capital at rest serves very few and is very harmful to everyone else. This is dangerously wrong. No economist would tell you that a high velocity of money is an inherent good, or even that increasing the velocity of money is an unfettered good. Public infrastructure, mortgages, venture capital, small business loans - all of these are investmen…
> No economist would tell you that a high velocity of money is an inherent good
You may be confusing money and capital. Money velocity is almost always good. If someone buys infrastructure bonds and then those proceeds are spent on contractors to build infrastructure (who in turn pay suppliers and employees) you have lots of money moving with velocity.
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#96I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece: The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways. Tax income more, they'll take it as dividends. Tax dividends more, they'll take it as capital gains. Tax capital gains, they won't realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they'll just get bank loans again't their stock holding…
A progressive national sales tax. Because you can't avoid buying goods and services, and not everyone gets a W2 paycheck (Buffet, Gates, Trump).
A progressive sales would be very difficult to implement and maintain. Virtually every good / service would need to have a tax associated with it. How much do you tax a Honda Civic vs an Acura RSX? A BMW? Bentley? How much do you tax a 33ft yacht? A 60ft yacht? This thing would also need to be updated very often as new technology comes out. Think about Apple Watches, VR headsets, etc. You'd need a small army of tax lawyers to come up with and enforce this tax code.
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If your using money to keep score your probably using the wrong system to keep score. I think another side of the problem is 99% of people who are not rich are using the same score and since they are "losing" they hate the rich. If we all stop using money as the score we'd all be better off.
What quantifiable system of keeping score is as universally applicaple as money? Money is an awful way to keep score on a global scale, but it seems to be the best we have.
seems like this would be at least a better start:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2017/02/08/the-5...
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem is that no tax code can close all loop holes because you just can't foresee the creative ways people will out maneuver the tax code." I disagree. I simple flat tax rate where everything is taxed at a single rate would close every single one of the loopholes above, if only by making it moot. The fact that the rich can maneuver themselves into a much lower tax rate than the average person presents a signif…
A flat tax rate is not a good idea whatsoever; if you tax e.g. 20% of earnings ,do you believe people who earn $30k a year are impacted the same way as people earning $200k or more? Sure, those who earn more pay more, but it hits them in "extra" earnings, while the poor are taxed on money they need to survive. A (very) progressive tax rate with a few ways of reducing the tax based on social (e.g. number of children,…
A flat tax you only start paying above a certain threshold then? For sake of argument everything under 20k is tax free, you pay flat tax on everything above? Problem solved?
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#99Like most treatments of this topic, when comparing tax rates from the 1950s and 1960s to today, it fails to note that very few people actually paid this much higher marginal rates. Instead, the high taxation on the upper income brackets encouraged companies to offer perks and benefits that would not be classified as income, and the wealthy would take advantage of these instead. Furthermore, yes, tax rates are lower t…
> the high taxation on the upper income brackets encouraged companies to offer perks and benefits that would not be classified as income, and the wealthy would take advantage of these instead
An interesting anecdote on this is in the origin of American private health insurance. It came about from war-era wage freezes. Companies wanted to differentiate, were barred from doing so with price, and so shifted to benefits [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United...
Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax evasion is illegally not paying the taxes that are due. If you are taking advantages of legal loopholes, it is not tax evasion.
What if you make the rules so simple that there are NO loopholes and there is no/little possibility for tax avoidance?
This would be an ideal world:
> What if you make the rules so simple that there are NO loopholes and there is no/little possibility for tax avoidance?
Then we could lower tax "rates", reduce dead weight loss, and increase tax receipts.
But no, we've decided, for example, that home ownership is important for everyone so we subsidize home ownership by letting people write off mortgage interest. This has the unintended effect of driving up prices for homes and encouraging people to buy more home than they need.
When taxes are too high, it causes pathological behavior.
Some people will, even if it nets them less after taxes, minimize taxes paid. "Tax shelters" in the 80's would be all but guaranteed to lose money, and yet people would still buy into them because they would reduce their taxes and pay huge fees based on the total taxes that would be reduced. These arrangements were legal (although the IRS was hawkish on them) but actually made no business sense for investors.