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In 2010 in Denmark there was an initiative done for people wanting to pay more in taxes - people who claimed in the public debate, that they really wanted to pa

In 2010 in Denmark there was an initiative done for people wanting to pay more in taxes - people who claimed in the public debate, that they really wanted to pay more. The tax department opened up a bank account, that people could pay in extra taxes for, if they wanted. If you felt like you should pay more, you could. Two years later, the initiative was shut down - having accumulated about 15000USD (fifteen THOUSAND) - in a country with 5.5M inhabitants. A lot of people want OTHERS to pay more in taxes and some people SAY they should pay more in taxes to score some cheap karma-points. Almost nobody ACTUALLY want to pay more in taxes.

lkbm 8y ago
I don't believe I am able to pay enough to make a difference. I believe that if all people of my income paid more, we could make a difference. I support all people of my income, including me, paying more taxes and opposed me alone paying more taxes. The evidence you've provided does not provide significant support to your conclusion. Here's what WOULD support your conclusion: If given the choice between someone who would increase taxes for people of my income or keeping them the same/lower (ceteris paribus), I voted for the latter. If I'm voting for the former, that straight up contradicts your position. Guess how I vote. Guess how the author votes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago
  I think your point support theirs, actually. You don't want to pay more in taxes -- you don't believe it would make a difference, despite knowing how numbers work, and knowing that it literally would. I suspect you mean that the marginal difference for the government doesn't justify the loss for you. That's fair, but it's exactly GP's point: you don't want to pay more taxes, because you don't care when there's no reward for you personally; instead, you want millions of people to pay more taxes for your benefit.
  - cecilpl2 8y ago
    If I alone pay more taxes, I do not see enough benefit to justify the cost. If all people pay more taxes, a large majority of us will see a net benefit that outweighs our own cost. I support raising taxes for everyone, including myself. This should not be a difficult concept to understand.
    - davidivadavid 8y ago
      It's actually very difficult to understand because it seems nonsensical on the face of it. If people paying more taxes is a net good, then certainly any amount of additional taxes collected would be a net good. Are you suggesting that there's a magic threshold that needs to be crossed where individual contributions amount to more than the sum of their parts? If so, what is it, and why does it exist? And why does that threshold always seem to be conveniently too high for people who claim they want to contribute more?
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Since we're on HN, I'll give you an example of a pretty successful startup built on those "magic thresholds": Kickstarter. Yes, of course having more money scales the ROI superlinearly. Lots of projects can't be done at all without a minimum investment. Others just have economies of scale (e.g. dilution of fixed overhead). And considering that the government usually does stuff on very large scales, it's not strange that a single taxpayer's contribution is too small to be meaningful. Just creating a government program probably takes more than what I pay yearly.
        antidesitter 8y ago
        The government is not in the position of a “kickstarter”. It has tons of revenue already, so your point doesn’t make sense.
      - AQuantized 8y ago
        Paying more personal taxes voluntarily is a net loss to me personally. Everyone in my income band paying more tax is the same absolute loss in income, but the net loss is substantially reduced due to the additional governmental funds, perhaps even becoming a net gain.
- rosege 8y ago
  I think this partly comes down to what country you live in - If I lived in a Scandinavian country where it seems like people get pretty good value for their tax dollars I would be ok with paying a higher tax rate. If I lived in the USA where tax dollars are wasted on wars in the Middle East and building useless walls I would want to pay as little as possible.
- jazzyk 8y ago
  >I don't believe I am able to pay enough to make a difference. I donate money and goods to a couple, carefully selected, charities every year. Having volunteered for them on a couple of occasions, I can definitely tell you my relatively modest help DID make a big difference to at least a few families. I am not forcing anyone else to be charitable, yet there are many people who give (much more than I do). There are two problems with your thinking: - the return on our taxes paid in the USA is very, very low - we pay only a bit less in taxes then people in Europe, yet the infrastructure is crumbling, there are lots of desolate/mentally ill people in the streets, etc. - you seem to want to FORCE people to pay more tax for your noble causes. Guess what - not everyone will agree with you what they are. That's why taxes should be limited to defense, law enforcement, public infrastructure, standardization, etc.
skh 8y ago
I think my wife and I should pay more in taxes. I also feel that I shouldn't die on my sword and voluntarily pay more in taxes whilst others in my income bracket don't. There is nothing contradictory in this. But suppose you think it is hypocritical of me to think tax rates should be higher for people like me while not voluntarily paying more in taxes. At most you can conclude that I'm a hypocrite. My hypocrisy does not detract from the veracity of the belief that taxes should be higher for people like me. That belief is correct/true/valid or wrong independent of my hypocrisy.
- golemotron 8y ago
  That's bad reasoning. Every dollar you give helps people. What other people do doesn't affect that. So, yes, hypocrisy. You just don't want to pay more.
  - skh 8y ago
    OK. I'm a hypocrite. I do vote for higher taxes on myself and others. So I guess the last sentence you wrote isn't entirely correct. You do realize that people do seemingly contradictory things, right? And sometimes have overtly contradictory beliefs relative to their actions. As Saint Paul referenced; the thorn in his side. My beliefs versus my actions in this instance is an aspect of the free rider problem. Look it up.
    - golemotron 8y ago
      I'm aware of the free rider problem. I'm willing to bet, by the way, that the author of the article does pay a lot more in taxes than he thinks. People often speak as if effective tax rate were the net amount. That's something to think about in the context of free riders.
      - skh 8y ago
        If you are aware of the free rider problem then you oughtn't be unaware that people can believe that something should be done but won't do it if they aren't forced to.
tomxor 8y ago
> A lot of people want OTHERS to pay more in taxes If "a lot of people" is simply the 99.9%, and "Others" are the super rich 0.1%... I'm pretty sure the 99.9% would massively benefit... and the "others" would probably still be extremely rich.
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
> Almost nobody ACTUALLY want to pay more in taxes. That's a silly conclusion. I'll gladly vote for a policy measure that benefits a group of people at the expense of a group of people among which I find myself. But I won't vote for a policy measure that benefits a group of people at the expense of just myself and nobody else. In that case, I would prefer a straight up donation of my own choosing. As such, this Danish bank account would see no money from me.
mikestew 8y ago
Almost nobody ACTUALLY want to pay more in taxes. I don’t want to pay more taxes. I want myself and those in my peer group to pay more taxes. Your referenced experiment proved little other than that a few of the Dutch don’t understand game theory (or are just really philanthropic).
- IkmoIkmo 8y ago
  People from Denmark are Danish, people from the Netherlands are Dutch :)
afterburner 8y ago
There is a line every year in Canadian income tax forms that lets you contribute to paying down the national debt. Not sure how much they collect; you don't get a tax benefit from it.
ip26 8y ago
A lot of people want OTHERS to pay more in taxes Or perhaps people want everyone, including themselves, to pay more taxes. A fair, equitable, and shared burden. If it's just you, you feel like a sucker being taken advantage of.
lordnacho 8y ago
Well obviously you can't buy a new hospital if your neighbour doesn't also contribute. What they should have done is make a rule that says if I pay into this special account, everyone else's tax rate goes up. See what happens then.
wutbrodo 8y ago
Both you and apparently Denmark don't understand how basic collective action problems work. The point is that individual action is often insufficient, while coordinated action isn't. It's entirely consistent to want a coordinated rule that hurts you individually but not want to take the corresponding individual action. Hell, there's even situations in which it would be rational for _every_ party to want a rule constricting their individual actions without it being rational to take that action individually (ie with no guarantee that the rest of the group isn't defecting). If you're familiar with the prisoner's dilemma, which is a toy, two-party example, there's a massive difference between coordinating cooperation and unilaterally taking the cooperate action.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  We’re discussing “government budget” here. The marginal revenue brought by that extra payment is exactly the same as when everyone else pays it.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    Yes, and that marginal revenue from a single taxpayer isn't enough to do anything of consequence. It's too simple-minded a model to treat government capabilities as a function of revenue as continuous. This is exacerbated by the fact that voluntary donations would be a highly volatile revenue source, correlated with economic growth in ways that are much more complicated than an income tax covering the entire population in a well-defined way does. That uncertainty around revenue is costly, further reducing the utility of the marginal revenue. For an overly reductive example: a rich person could support higher taxes (including his own) to be raised to a level that could feasibly fund a social safety net on par with a UBI. If he were to unilaterally provide his portion of higher tax revenues, the government wouldn't instantly implement a minuscule, partial increase in the safety net. OTOH, a consistent tax regime based around a consistently higher revenue base is a fiscal environment in which we could move further towards this person's preferred policies. (Note that I'm making no endorsement or rejection of the specific policy described above, just using it as an example to point out how nonsensical the complaint in this thread is).
deogeo 8y ago
By that logic, everyone wants the tax rate to be 0%, and the penalty for murder to be a stern talking to. If you think you should go to prison for murder, you're free to do so!

lkbm 8y ago

I don't believe I am able to pay enough to make a difference. I believe that if all people of my income paid more, we could make a difference. I support all people of my income, including me, paying more taxes and opposed me alone paying more taxes. The evidence you've provided does not provide significant support to your conclusion. Here's what WOULD support your conclusion: If given the choice between someone who would increase taxes for people of my income or keeping them the same/lower (ceteris paribus), I voted for the latter. If I'm voting for the former, that straight up contradicts your position. Guess how I vote. Guess how the author votes.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
NotAnEconomist 8y ago
I think your point support theirs, actually. You don't want to pay more in taxes -- you don't believe it would make a difference, despite knowing how numbers work, and knowing that it literally would. I suspect you mean that the marginal difference for the government doesn't justify the loss for you. That's fair, but it's exactly GP's point: you don't want to pay more taxes, because you don't care when there's no reward for you personally; instead, you want millions of people to pay more taxes for your benefit.
- cecilpl2 8y ago
  If I alone pay more taxes, I do not see enough benefit to justify the cost. If all people pay more taxes, a large majority of us will see a net benefit that outweighs our own cost. I support raising taxes for everyone, including myself. This should not be a difficult concept to understand.
  - davidivadavid 8y ago
    It's actually very difficult to understand because it seems nonsensical on the face of it. If people paying more taxes is a net good, then certainly any amount of additional taxes collected would be a net good. Are you suggesting that there's a magic threshold that needs to be crossed where individual contributions amount to more than the sum of their parts? If so, what is it, and why does it exist? And why does that threshold always seem to be conveniently too high for people who claim they want to contribute more?
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Since we're on HN, I'll give you an example of a pretty successful startup built on those "magic thresholds": Kickstarter. Yes, of course having more money scales the ROI superlinearly. Lots of projects can't be done at all without a minimum investment. Others just have economies of scale (e.g. dilution of fixed overhead). And considering that the government usually does stuff on very large scales, it's not strange that a single taxpayer's contribution is too small to be meaningful. Just creating a government program probably takes more than what I pay yearly.
      - antidesitter 8y ago
        The government is not in the position of a “kickstarter”. It has tons of revenue already, so your point doesn’t make sense.
    - AQuantized 8y ago
      Paying more personal taxes voluntarily is a net loss to me personally. Everyone in my income band paying more tax is the same absolute loss in income, but the net loss is substantially reduced due to the additional governmental funds, perhaps even becoming a net gain.
rosege 8y ago
I think this partly comes down to what country you live in - If I lived in a Scandinavian country where it seems like people get pretty good value for their tax dollars I would be ok with paying a higher tax rate. If I lived in the USA where tax dollars are wasted on wars in the Middle East and building useless walls I would want to pay as little as possible.
jazzyk 8y ago
>I don't believe I am able to pay enough to make a difference. I donate money and goods to a couple, carefully selected, charities every year. Having volunteered for them on a couple of occasions, I can definitely tell you my relatively modest help DID make a big difference to at least a few families. I am not forcing anyone else to be charitable, yet there are many people who give (much more than I do). There are two problems with your thinking: - the return on our taxes paid in the USA is very, very low - we pay only a bit less in taxes then people in Europe, yet the infrastructure is crumbling, there are lots of desolate/mentally ill people in the streets, etc. - you seem to want to FORCE people to pay more tax for your noble causes. Guess what - not everyone will agree with you what they are. That's why taxes should be limited to defense, law enforcement, public infrastructure, standardization, etc.

skh 8y ago

I think my wife and I should pay more in taxes. I also feel that I shouldn't die on my sword and voluntarily pay more in taxes whilst others in my income bracket don't. There is nothing contradictory in this. But suppose you think it is hypocritical of me to think tax rates should be higher for people like me while not voluntarily paying more in taxes. At most you can conclude that I'm a hypocrite. My hypocrisy does not detract from the veracity of the belief that taxes should be higher for people like me. That belief is correct/true/valid or wrong independent of my hypocrisy.

golemotron 8y ago
That's bad reasoning. Every dollar you give helps people. What other people do doesn't affect that. So, yes, hypocrisy. You just don't want to pay more.
- skh 8y ago
  OK. I'm a hypocrite. I do vote for higher taxes on myself and others. So I guess the last sentence you wrote isn't entirely correct. You do realize that people do seemingly contradictory things, right? And sometimes have overtly contradictory beliefs relative to their actions. As Saint Paul referenced; the thorn in his side. My beliefs versus my actions in this instance is an aspect of the free rider problem. Look it up.
  - golemotron 8y ago
    I'm aware of the free rider problem. I'm willing to bet, by the way, that the author of the article does pay a lot more in taxes than he thinks. People often speak as if effective tax rate were the net amount. That's something to think about in the context of free riders.
    - skh 8y ago
      If you are aware of the free rider problem then you oughtn't be unaware that people can believe that something should be done but won't do it if they aren't forced to.

tomxor 8y ago

> A lot of people want OTHERS to pay more in taxes If "a lot of people" is simply the 99.9%, and "Others" are the super rich 0.1%... I'm pretty sure the 99.9% would massively benefit... and the "others" would probably still be extremely rich.

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

> Almost nobody ACTUALLY want to pay more in taxes. That's a silly conclusion. I'll gladly vote for a policy measure that benefits a group of people at the expense of a group of people among which I find myself. But I won't vote for a policy measure that benefits a group of people at the expense of just myself and nobody else. In that case, I would prefer a straight up donation of my own choosing. As such, this Danish bank account would see no money from me.

mikestew 8y ago

Almost nobody ACTUALLY want to pay more in taxes. I don’t want to pay more taxes. I want myself and those in my peer group to pay more taxes. Your referenced experiment proved little other than that a few of the Dutch don’t understand game theory (or are just really philanthropic).

IkmoIkmo 8y ago
People from Denmark are Danish, people from the Netherlands are Dutch :)

afterburner 8y ago

There is a line every year in Canadian income tax forms that lets you contribute to paying down the national debt. Not sure how much they collect; you don't get a tax benefit from it.

ip26 8y ago

A lot of people want OTHERS to pay more in taxes Or perhaps people want everyone, including themselves, to pay more taxes. A fair, equitable, and shared burden. If it's just you, you feel like a sucker being taken advantage of.

lordnacho 8y ago

Well obviously you can't buy a new hospital if your neighbour doesn't also contribute. What they should have done is make a rule that says if I pay into this special account, everyone else's tax rate goes up. See what happens then.

wutbrodo 8y ago

Both you and apparently Denmark don't understand how basic collective action problems work. The point is that individual action is often insufficient, while coordinated action isn't. It's entirely consistent to want a coordinated rule that hurts you individually but not want to take the corresponding individual action. Hell, there's even situations in which it would be rational for _every_ party to want a rule constricting their individual actions without it being rational to take that action individually (ie with no guarantee that the rest of the group isn't defecting). If you're familiar with the prisoner's dilemma, which is a toy, two-party example, there's a massive difference between coordinating cooperation and unilaterally taking the cooperate action.

antidesitter 8y ago
We’re discussing “government budget” here. The marginal revenue brought by that extra payment is exactly the same as when everyone else pays it.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Yes, and that marginal revenue from a single taxpayer isn't enough to do anything of consequence. It's too simple-minded a model to treat government capabilities as a function of revenue as continuous. This is exacerbated by the fact that voluntary donations would be a highly volatile revenue source, correlated with economic growth in ways that are much more complicated than an income tax covering the entire population in a well-defined way does. That uncertainty around revenue is costly, further reducing the utility of the marginal revenue. For an overly reductive example: a rich person could support higher taxes (including his own) to be raised to a level that could feasibly fund a social safety net on par with a UBI. If he were to unilaterally provide his portion of higher tax revenues, the government wouldn't instantly implement a minuscule, partial increase in the safety net. OTOH, a consistent tax regime based around a consistently higher revenue base is a fiscal environment in which we could move further towards this person's preferred policies. (Note that I'm making no endorsement or rejection of the specific policy described above, just using it as an example to point out how nonsensical the complaint in this thread is).

deogeo 8y ago

By that logic, everyone wants the tax rate to be 0%, and the penalty for murder to be a stern talking to. If you think you should go to prison for murder, you're free to do so!