3 ms·

This might work: x = gross_income / median_income; if( x <= 1 ) { return 0; } if( x <= 50 ) { y = ( x * Math.ln( x ) - x + 1 ) / Math.ln( 2

This might work: x = gross_income / median_income; if( x <= 1 ) { return 0; } if( x <= 50 ) { y = ( x * Math.ln( x ) - x + 1 ) / Math.ln( 2500 ); } else { y = x - 0.5 * Math.ln( 50 ) * Math.li( x ) + 4.862; } return y * median_income; Math.ln() is the log function for base e, and Math.li() is the logarithmic integral function. The constants are based on the income at 50 times the median income having a marginal tax rate of 50%, and the median income having a marginal tax rate of 0%. Marginal tax rates above 50% asymptotically approach 100%. There are no loopholes or exemptions. If the median income is $32k, and you earned $31k, your tax is zero. Your only obligation is to report your gross income honestly, so that the median income is calculated accurately for next year. If your income is $96k, your x = 3.0, your y = 0.1656, so your tax is $15.9k . If your income is $1.6M, your x = 50, your y = 18.74, so your tax is $600k . If your income is $32M, your x = 1000, your y = 657.5, and your tax = $21M. The only effective ways to reduce your tax would be to reduce your income (as reported) or raise the nationwide median income, such as by paying your lowest-paid workers more in the previous year. Seems fair to me.

m0zg 8y ago
There's one fly in this socialist ointment: all the rich people will immediately bail, and go live elsewhere.
- c22 8y ago
  It shouldn't matter where they live if they're still making their money here. And if they're not making any money then they're not paying taxes under this scheme anyway.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Ah. Well, that's fine. They can go somewhere else and renounce citizenship, then huff and puff when they start having difficulties getting the money out of the businesses and property they left behind, and getting the knobbly, nail-studded end of the mercantilists' stick. Your argument rests on the presumption that the economy needs super-rich people to be performant, when corporations and governments have already solved the problem of collaborative concentration of capital. If they leave, and the economy somehow fails to collapse, they have shown the lie behind rich folks as "job creators". Economies are run by the people who do the work. Sitting on ass and writing checks serves to weed out some of the worst ideas, and shuffling financial instruments serves to lubricate the gears of the economic machine, but should the rich ever go on strike, they will immediately lose all their leverage as the economy restructures itself to work without them. At worst, they can just get replaced by newly-minted rich people.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    That's how you get Venezuela though. Good luck with that.
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      You get Venezuela with bad government. And they bought theirs with state-owned (nationalized in 1976) petroleum money, not with progressive income taxes. Progressive taxation is how you get Europe. Occasionally, someone like Gerard Depardieu flees the top tax rate in France, the world's top taxer, but it still manages to be a G7 economy, somehow. And, contrariwise, when a nation coddles its billionaires, and lets them do whatever they want, that's how you get the current US government. Nobody's starving, though. Not yet. We still might check that off with another government shutdown and another trade war escalation and another diplomatic insult or provocation.
      - m0zg 8y ago
        You get Venezuela by committing to give people somebody else's money rather than create the environment in which they can make their own.
        logfromblammo 8y ago
        Venezuela has complex cause. You aren't doing anyone any favors by simplistically reducing it to your favorite contributing factor, nor are you arguing honestly when you conflate progressive income taxation with socialism, or in this specific instance, Chavismo--which is rooted in socialism, with a lot of extra features, including populism. Committing to give people someone else's money is every government expenditure that is paid for by taxation. It's the welfare state. It's the military-industrial complex. It's infrastructure projects. It's corruption. It's operating funds for regulatory agencies. It's foreign adventurism. Everything. Most governments have budgets that are funded entirely by "somebody else's money". You have made several unspoken assumptions in this discussion, and I think it may be best for you to make them explicit before continuing. People aren't leaving Venezuela because taxes are high. And Venezuela's problems aren't a result of rich folks fleeing to Miami and Madrid. They are all leaving--the non-government rich, the middle-class, and the poor--because price-fixing creates shortages, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. If one pays for the party with oil money, one also has to turn off the music when the international commodity price for Venezuelan crude oil goes down. But they didn't turn it off; they turned it up. Can you provide any details on Venezuela's progressive income tax? All I could find was a flat 34% tax on income for nonresidents, and that the lowest rate for residents might be 6%. Which Venezuelans left specifically because they didn't want to pay 34%?
Zanni 8y ago
You're solving the wrong problem. Calculating tax owed is the easy part. Figuring out your income is the challenge: tracking all your business expenses, depreciation, credits, exemptions, etc.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Deduct the labor cost of salary and wages only, and the distributions to the owners. Those are someone else's income. If it isn't someone else's income, for them to pay tax on, you pay tax on it. No loopholes or exemptions, period. The only way for a dollar to not be your income is if you gave it to someone else, to be their income. If you add up all the incomes of all the tax-paying entities, it should equal the money supply multiplied by the velocity, minus the unreported income economy.

m0zg 8y ago

There's one fly in this socialist ointment: all the rich people will immediately bail, and go live elsewhere.

c22 8y ago
It shouldn't matter where they live if they're still making their money here. And if they're not making any money then they're not paying taxes under this scheme anyway.
logfromblammo 8y ago
Ah. Well, that's fine. They can go somewhere else and renounce citizenship, then huff and puff when they start having difficulties getting the money out of the businesses and property they left behind, and getting the knobbly, nail-studded end of the mercantilists' stick. Your argument rests on the presumption that the economy needs super-rich people to be performant, when corporations and governments have already solved the problem of collaborative concentration of capital. If they leave, and the economy somehow fails to collapse, they have shown the lie behind rich folks as "job creators". Economies are run by the people who do the work. Sitting on ass and writing checks serves to weed out some of the worst ideas, and shuffling financial instruments serves to lubricate the gears of the economic machine, but should the rich ever go on strike, they will immediately lose all their leverage as the economy restructures itself to work without them. At worst, they can just get replaced by newly-minted rich people.
- m0zg 8y ago
  That's how you get Venezuela though. Good luck with that.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    You get Venezuela with bad government. And they bought theirs with state-owned (nationalized in 1976) petroleum money, not with progressive income taxes. Progressive taxation is how you get Europe. Occasionally, someone like Gerard Depardieu flees the top tax rate in France, the world's top taxer, but it still manages to be a G7 economy, somehow. And, contrariwise, when a nation coddles its billionaires, and lets them do whatever they want, that's how you get the current US government. Nobody's starving, though. Not yet. We still might check that off with another government shutdown and another trade war escalation and another diplomatic insult or provocation.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      You get Venezuela by committing to give people somebody else's money rather than create the environment in which they can make their own.
      - logfromblammo 8y ago
        Venezuela has complex cause. You aren't doing anyone any favors by simplistically reducing it to your favorite contributing factor, nor are you arguing honestly when you conflate progressive income taxation with socialism, or in this specific instance, Chavismo--which is rooted in socialism, with a lot of extra features, including populism. Committing to give people someone else's money is every government expenditure that is paid for by taxation. It's the welfare state. It's the military-industrial complex. It's infrastructure projects. It's corruption. It's operating funds for regulatory agencies. It's foreign adventurism. Everything. Most governments have budgets that are funded entirely by "somebody else's money". You have made several unspoken assumptions in this discussion, and I think it may be best for you to make them explicit before continuing. People aren't leaving Venezuela because taxes are high. And Venezuela's problems aren't a result of rich folks fleeing to Miami and Madrid. They are all leaving--the non-government rich, the middle-class, and the poor--because price-fixing creates shortages, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. If one pays for the party with oil money, one also has to turn off the music when the international commodity price for Venezuelan crude oil goes down. But they didn't turn it off; they turned it up. Can you provide any details on Venezuela's progressive income tax? All I could find was a flat 34% tax on income for nonresidents, and that the lowest rate for residents might be 6%. Which Venezuelans left specifically because they didn't want to pay 34%?

Zanni 8y ago

You're solving the wrong problem. Calculating tax owed is the easy part. Figuring out your income is the challenge: tracking all your business expenses, depreciation, credits, exemptions, etc.

logfromblammo 8y ago
Deduct the labor cost of salary and wages only, and the distributions to the owners. Those are someone else's income. If it isn't someone else's income, for them to pay tax on, you pay tax on it. No loopholes or exemptions, period. The only way for a dollar to not be your income is if you gave it to someone else, to be their income. If you add up all the incomes of all the tax-paying entities, it should equal the money supply multiplied by the velocity, minus the unreported income economy.