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> If you want to tax those with very high incomes, directly tax those with very high incomes. I'm not going to argue for/against capital taxes, but what are yo

by chrisan 11y ago

> If you want to tax those with very high incomes, directly tax those with very high incomes. I'm not going to argue for/against capital taxes, but what are your thoughts on those who are in the top x% and avoid high income wages and make money other ways, or the whole Warren Buffet/secretary thing?

jnordwick 11y ago
1- I don't like using the 1 in a billion for examples. It is way too easy to draw really bad conclusions. Even if everything he tells us is true, do you really want to set taxes for the top 1% based on 20 obscenely wealthy people in the US? There's a lot of other reasons Buffet in particular is a bad example of anything basically. 2- A lot of these legal tax avoidance systems are a result of known breaks put in place for one intended use, but wind up being useful is so many many more ways. It is kind a game with many numerous complex rules where the winner winds up being the person with can find the most effective way of getting around those rules. To me this says the rules need to be made simpler and many tax breaks reconsidered, but obviously that isn't politically easy. Politicians tend to favor the group that makes the most noise, and when you try to take away a favorite tax break, those people will make a hell of a lot of noise. I think if pols made the decision to actually go against that, the electorate as a whole would support them, even some of the vocal few. 3- If he's being really truthful, I think its pretty bad. One of the big issues how you count payroll taxes for Social Security. When trying to analyze tax fairness, I don't think you should include them. After all, they are retirement program that comes back to you, and when you do retire, the more you paid in the lower your rate of return, so saying they are a regressive tax is completely discounting the nature of the tax. You should also then include everybody's retirement savings too (not possible I know). I favor progressivity in taxes, but the way some people go about doing the accounting, they seem to be very disingenuous and really want to just soak "the rich" as a matter of principle regardless of how it affects the entire economy. They would give up 20% of everybody's wealth as long as they could bring down the wealthy by 50%.

by chrisan 11y ago

jnordwick 11y ago

1- I don't like using the 1 in a billion for examples. It is way too easy to draw really bad conclusions. Even if everything he tells us is true, do you really want to set taxes for the top 1% based on 20 obscenely wealthy people in the US? There's a lot of other reasons Buffet in particular is a bad example of anything basically. 2- A lot of these legal tax avoidance systems are a result of known breaks put in place for one intended use, but wind up being useful is so many many more ways. It is kind a game with many numerous complex rules where the winner winds up being the person with can find the most effective way of getting around those rules. To me this says the rules need to be made simpler and many tax breaks reconsidered, but obviously that isn't politically easy. Politicians tend to favor the group that makes the most noise, and when you try to take away a favorite tax break, those people will make a hell of a lot of noise. I think if pols made the decision to actually go against that, the electorate as a whole would support them, even some of the vocal few. 3- If he's being really truthful, I think its pretty bad. One of the big issues how you count payroll taxes for Social Security. When trying to analyze tax fairness, I don't think you should include them. After all, they are retirement program that comes back to you, and when you do retire, the more you paid in the lower your rate of return, so saying they are a regressive tax is completely discounting the nature of the tax. You should also then include everybody's retirement savings too (not possible I know). I favor progressivity in taxes, but the way some people go about doing the accounting, they seem to be very disingenuous and really want to just soak "the rich" as a matter of principle regardless of how it affects the entire economy. They would give up 20% of everybody's wealth as long as they could bring down the wealthy by 50%.