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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

#91

Post by sam_lowry_ »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #86
kgwgk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work is added value. That is how VAT works. Edit: I guess that if you're paying a salary to someone in your household staff who can repare the smartphone you only need to buy (and pay VAT on) the replacement glass. But I don't think this is what you meant. I think that you just don't understand how VAT works. If you bring your phone to a repair shop in Belgium the 21% VAT will be applied on the whole bill, parts…

For the proverbial repair shop, supplies cost 50€ and the repair costs 100€. 50€ is left to the repair shop. In a country with 21% VAT, the supplier will be paid 60,50€, and the end client will have to pay 121€ for the repair. The repair shop now owes 21 - 10,50 = 10,50€ in VAT to the tax authorities. But the repair shop still has 50€! Assuming we are in Belgium and all of the benefit is used to pay the salary, we wi…

@kgwgk you are right wrt my use of the word "benefit", and indeed there is no corporate tax on these 50€. I updated the comment.

Still, work will be cheaper compared to the price of products.

In my example, the 50€ will be used to pay the salary, and the net salary will still be 20€ while the price of the phone will increase by 21%.

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

#92

Post by kgwgk »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #91
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the proverbial repair shop, supplies cost 50€ and the repair costs 100€. 50€ is left to the repair shop. In a country with 21% VAT, the supplier will be paid 60,50€, and the end client will have to pay 121€ for the repair. The repair shop now owes 21 - 10,50 = 10,50€ in VAT to the tax authorities. But the repair shop still has 50€! Assuming we are in Belgium and all of the benefit is used to pay the salary, we wi…

@kgwgk you are right wrt my use of the word "benefit", and indeed there is no corporate tax on these 50€. I updated the comment. Still, work will be cheaper compared to the price of products. In my example, the 50€ will be used to pay the salary, and the net salary will still be 20€ while the price of the phone will increase by 21%.

The price of the phone increases by 21% and the price of the repair also increases by 21%.

Of course if the price of the new phone before tax is higher than the price of the repair before tax the same will be true after tax.

And if the price of the phone is 200 and the price of the repair is half of that it will still be half of the price of the phone after tax. But if taxes are 0% it's either 200 or 100 for the repair and if taxes are 900% it's either 2000 or 1000 for the repair. The repair may be prefered if you cannot afford the difference but it will still be half the price of the new phone.

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

#93

Post by hemloc_io »

gnicholas wrote: post #23

As the saying goes, "Harvard/Yale are hedge funds with universities attached". https://thehustle.co/yale-harvard-crypto-investment-paradigm...

In a similar vein some other colleges are just REITs with Universities attached.

https://www.americancampus.com/for-universities/case-studies...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Anderson_Fry

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

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

austincheney wrote: post #13
dragonwriter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people really want anted to tax the rich the majority of taxes would come from sales taxes and minority from property taxes. No, if people really wanted to tax the rich, it wouldn’t be by consumption taxes, as the rich have a lower marginal propensity to consume. That makes as much sense as taxing the rich via progressive income taxes, but making capital gains taxed at a lower top marginal rate with a less-progr…

> If you want to tax the rich, use a progressive income tax and also: That sounds good in theory but it never works in practice, historically speaking. In practice there are exceptions, deductions, and compromises. It always disadvantages the non wealthy who are not in a position to argue for their special cases.

> That sounds good in theory but it never works in practice, historically speaking.

That’s because people in practice don’t do the “and also” part, but instead do something like the tax-the-rich theater of “‘taxing the rich’ via progressive income taxes, but making capital gains taxed at a lower top marginal rate with a less-progressive structure and labor income subject to special additional taxes.”

Because, in practice, the wealthy write the laws, and use control of the mechanisms of mass communication to focus attention on the parts that sound good favorable to the common man (progressive structure) and then distract from the impact of the bits that let the rich off and soak the working and middle class (preferential treatment of capital, gifts, and inheritances and anti-preferential treatment of labor income.)

Hence my focus and the “and also” bits that need to be part of a progressive income tax system for it to work properly.

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

#95

Post by cozuya »

Bancakes wrote: post #90
kwdc wrote: post #24

Catholic and other churches have a lot of money. Why not tax them?

Churches are not for profit and don't partake in the economy. At least the established European ones that have no membership dues and such.

Like all people, clergy gets paid money that they spend on things.

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

#96

Post by bradleyjg »

jacknews wrote: post #22
bradleyjg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a method for determining what to spend money on for the public good. Why have a parallel method that gives only rough guidelines to private, unelected parties? If people want to donate money to charity, they ought to donate their own money not foregone taxes.

You make a better argument than the article, but the implications are that you'd shift charitable activity from the private sector to government. That's not necessarily bad, but having a diversity of aid organizations is better, imho.

What you’d lose in diversity, you’d gain in focus. They are flip sides of the same coin. Some donor thinks a museum of modern architecture is charitable, which is fine but I don’t want tax money diverted to that.

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

#97

Post by ivalm »

djbebs wrote: post #25
ivalm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very backwards. As percentage of income poor people pay more than rich. If you want to tax über wealthy just tax wealth directly (let’s say 3% on all US citizens and residents on all things values above $10mil).

That's not true. The poorest 50% pay 3% of all taxes and make 13% of all income

Look at sales tax only, since that’s what’s being discussed.

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

#98

Post by austincheney »

yellowapple wrote: post #68
austincheney wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. The issue here is fairness and ensuring the wealthy pay their share.

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 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.

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

#99

Post by ivalm »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
ivalm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very backwards. As percentage of income poor people pay more than rich. If you want to tax über wealthy just tax wealth directly (let’s say 3% on all US citizens and residents on all things values above $10mil).

Wealth taxes basically guarantee that within a decade most wealth will be held in hard-to-value assets. It then becomes an arms race between lawyers and accountants. Given history, adding complexity to the tax system will benefit the rich at the expense of e.g. those of us with cash and stock and real estate. It would be a levy on the middle class.

If the exception is 10mil (as my OP suggests) then it will have no burden on middle class at all. People with nw>10mil are just not middle class.

In terms of asset changes, I don’t think this is true, hard to value assets generally have poor returns and definitionally have poor liquidity (which is why they are hard to value!). I’d rather have stock market returns and pay 3% of assets then have something exotic that I can’t sell.

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

#100

Post by ivalm »

austincheney wrote: post #58
ivalm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very backwards. As percentage of income poor people pay more than rich. If you want to tax über wealthy just tax wealth directly (let’s say 3% on all US citizens and residents on all things values above $10mil).

> just tax wealth directly Wealth comes in many forms. Your comment is void of any such specifics that transform this from fantasy into something that can be taxed. The best case for taxing wealth is an estate tax.

There are lots of existing wealth tax proposal, including annual taxes on all things above some exception. Realistically vast majority of wealth is held in stocks (or other ownership interest instruments), bonds (or other debt instruments), and real estate. These things have common valuation methods (and a wealth tax on real estate is already a thing — property taxes).

At the same time, I do support progressive (and at the high end very high) estate tax.

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