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Your argument that income is diverted to the rich to increase tax revenues doesn’t work if you think income is transferred to international corporations and bil

Your argument that income is diverted to the rich to increase tax revenues doesn’t work if you think income is transferred to international corporations and billionaires as these groups tend to not pay much tax. I guess you could make some argument about income tax paid by the employees of those international corporations but many large companies don’t have particularly well-paid staff. I think you’re conflating two different issues

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
The argument is against having higher marginal rates on billionaires than we do on anyone else. Whether we do or not currently doesn't affect the equation when you're talking about changing the existing policy to something else. But also, billionaires and international corporations do pay marginal rates higher than the middle class. Their effective rates are lower because they shield most of their income, but what they have is still above the threshold for paying the higher marginal rates. So, for example, a US billionaire makes $5B/year, only $1B of which is reported as taxable income in the US, cutting their effective rate by a factor of five. But nearly the whole billion dollars is at the high marginal rate. A piece of legislation that would cause their domestic business dealings to gain a hundred million dollars, so that they would make $5.1B/year and $1.1B in the US, would yield the US treasury more than the same total gain going to the middle class, because their marginal rate is higher even if their effective rate is lower. (And this is actually how it works because the shielded income is characteristically from foreign business dealings whereas domestic policy affects domestic business dealings.)