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"The wealthy" generally structure their income to avoid it being "income", or hide it in jurisdictions the US can't see, or any of dozens to hundreds of other t
by ubernostrum 8y ago
"The wealthy" generally structure their income to avoid it being "income", or hide it in jurisdictions the US can't see, or any of dozens to hundreds of other tricks to make sure they don't pay anything resembling their share.
This is a game as old as the US income tax itself; the 16th Amendment wasn't passed to legalize income taxes (they were already legal), but to make sure Congress could tax income "from whatever source derived", since wealthy people were restructuring their income streams to try to avoid taxation.
They still do that today.
- twblalock 8y agoThat's an argument for changing the income tax rules, not for adding a wealth tax. In any case, a wealth tax would be easy to game too. There is a lot of room for loopholes in the definition of wealth, what kind of wealth should be taxed, what the tax brackets should be, what kinds of deductions are allowed, etc.
- VintageCool 8y agoWe need to rebuild the Inheritance Tax. Hit the wealth at the moment of inheritance, when it acts as income for the next generation. I'm worried about the decline of the inheritance tax. It's happening all over the West. In France, "the incomes attained by the top 1% of French inheritors are already higher than those attained by the top 1% of workers". We could be headed back to a Jane Austen -esque society where ambitious young people seek their fortunes in marriage, rather than in business.