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Really? The average income of someone in the top 1 percent is around 1 million, and the average income of the average person in the US is around 50k. So the top

Really? The average income of someone in the top 1 percent is around 1 million, and the average income of the average person in the US is around 50k. So the top 1 percent have 20 percent of the income, so a 10 percent tax increase on the top 1 percent corresponds to a total increase of 2 percent, which isn't a small amount.

rufus_foreman 6y ago
Am I reading this right, you think that if you increase the tax rate on high income people by 10%, you will get 10% more taxes from them?
amscanne 6y ago
Taxes select for income brackets, not people. Consider your example: 1mm is an average. You need about 300k/yr to be in the top 1%. So you make it a marginal tax on income above 300k? To actually collect 10% more taxes from that group, you would need strictly more than a 10% marginal tax. In practice, your marginal rate is probably 20-30%, since you would barely collect from the first ~0.5% (too close to 300k). If you have a marginal increase of 30%, you’re going to start to see significant changes in behavior, since dollars above 300k would be taxed at ~65%. (Since we’re talking about people taking in > 1mm/yr, that probably just means more retained earnings.) The top 1% is already likely paying the full federal marginal rate on their income (or AMT at least), so even if you tried to take every last cent above 300k/yr you probably wouldn’t be able to increase revenue by more than 10%. (But this is a hypothetical only, as such a move would obviously result in less revenue than today, since no one would bother earning the dollars that are taxed at ~35% right now.) So yeah, maybe you could squeeze all those people for a few % more revenue, but there’s not a ton more juice than that, and I’m skeptical that it would even work at all. But “taxing the 1%” is certainly not a game changer the way it’s spun.

rufus_foreman 6y ago

Am I reading this right, you think that if you increase the tax rate on high income people by 10%, you will get 10% more taxes from them?

amscanne 6y ago

Taxes select for income brackets, not people. Consider your example: 1mm is an average. You need about 300k/yr to be in the top 1%. So you make it a marginal tax on income above 300k? To actually collect 10% more taxes from that group, you would need strictly more than a 10% marginal tax. In practice, your marginal rate is probably 20-30%, since you would barely collect from the first ~0.5% (too close to 300k). If you have a marginal increase of 30%, you’re going to start to see significant changes in behavior, since dollars above 300k would be taxed at ~65%. (Since we’re talking about people taking in > 1mm/yr, that probably just means more retained earnings.) The top 1% is already likely paying the full federal marginal rate on their income (or AMT at least), so even if you tried to take every last cent above 300k/yr you probably wouldn’t be able to increase revenue by more than 10%. (But this is a hypothetical only, as such a move would obviously result in less revenue than today, since no one would bother earning the dollars that are taxed at ~35% right now.) So yeah, maybe you could squeeze all those people for a few % more revenue, but there’s not a ton more juice than that, and I’m skeptical that it would even work at all. But “taxing the 1%” is certainly not a game changer the way it’s spun.