I'm extremely skeptical of taxes that try to take a large amount of money from individuals for two reason. One is psychological. I make a small amount of mone

I'm extremely skeptical of taxes that try to take a large amount of money from individuals for two reason. One is psychological. I make a small amount of money relative to Jeff Bezos. If you root under my couch cushions you'll find nickles and dimes. Naturally if you do the same for Jeff you'll find $100 bills and stock certificates worth thousands of dollars. Except you don't. Because on some level if you ask Jeff if $1000 is a lot of money he'll say yes. People know that some amount is a percentage of their totally wealth but they also understand what an amount is worth in absolute terms. And they're jealous of it in those terms. The other problem I have is that tax avoidance is a fixed cost. It's the price of a tax attorney or more cynically a congressman. All three of the groups - the taxed, the lawyers and the congress people - have an understanding on that. You don't pay %10 of the tax to avoid the tax - you pay a set amount to avoid it. As the tax grows larger the incentive to avoid ratchets up.