4 ms·
From your original post, you seem to feel progressive taxes requires some sort of absurdly different treatment for people who make $999,999/yr vs $1,000,000/yr,
by Chinjut 4y ago
From your original post, you seem to feel progressive taxes requires some sort of absurdly different treatment for people who make $999,999/yr vs $1,000,000/yr, or at whatever threshold, but that is not at all how they function. Even with discrete jumps in marginal tax rates (as in the current system of progressive income tax in the U.S.), post-tax income is a continuous monotonic function of pre-tax income. Making a little more pre-tax income always results in making a little more post-tax income.
- monero-xmr 4y agoMy problem is that no one can logically explain why they chose what thresholds. It doesn’t mean anything, they just decided some number. I can play games and avoid that number. It’s absurd
- Chinjut 4y agoWhy are you playing games to avoid that number? There's no big difference in being slightly above vs slightly below that number. Indeed, it's slightly better to be slightly above.
- Buttons840 4y agoThere is a common fallacy that going up a tax bracket can result in taking home less money. For example, sometimes you'll hear apocryphal stories about someone turning down a small raise because they did the math and realized it would move them into the next tax bracket and result in them taking home less money. That's not how progressive taxes work, and such stories are incorrect. I just wanted to double check that you understand this, right?
- monero-xmr 4y agoYou are speaking as a non-wealthy person. If I have significant sums of equities, I can sell half on Dec 31 and half on Jan 1 to avoid a new bracket. I try to avoid speaking much about my situation, but my tax advisors and I use every trick in the book to play all the games available, of which this is but one. My issue is not that I have dedicated a lot of time and money to avoid taxes, but really that the tax rules are so arbitrary and stupid to begin with.
- Chinjut 4y agoYour advocacy for a wealth tax on unrealized capital gains is compelling. Let us adopt that.
- monero-xmr 4y agoA wealth tax! Even France tried and abandoned that! Do you have any idea the side effects that would cause? Suddenly I would be a pauper, how simple this would be.
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- rnk 4y agoWe have wealth taxes. They are called property taxes in the US. I have to pay a percentage of the value of my house. And I can't sell a tiny piece of my house to cover it. I have to use my other funds to pay for it. That seems so unfair, the poor weak billionaires of the world say. When My house goes up in value, my tax will go up, and down works the other way too. Billionaires cry and moan about the impossibility of paying a wealth tax on their billions in stock. They can manage to do it, just like all the rest of us. The wealth tax is claimed to be this exotic impossible thing. Yet most every home owner in the us is paying, us 100 million plus people. Surely the rich, those who have millions or billions can do the same. The reason they don't is they have captured the legislature, their fox new advertising is very successful, no one wants to tax the very wealthy because surely they will be wealthy one day.
- monero-xmr 4y agoOut of all the possible ways you can tax me, a wealth tax is easily the dumbest and easiest to avoid. I wish the US would do it just to show the world why this is so absurd. I don’t even want to get into it, just that the folly would be enormous and my laughter very loud.
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- kennywinker 4y agoThe logic of a progressive tax is that tax is supporting the system that we all exist in and benefit from. I pay less tax than someone who makes more than me because they are extracting more wealth from the system than I am. Yes, the brackets are arbitrary. But if everything is working in a democracy, then it should be set by the majority to follow the curve of what the majority of people make in some reasonable way. But, it’s not in america, because money is speech apparently so rich people buy votes and keep their progressive taxes lower than they would otherwise be.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoIs saying "if you cross this line, you're rich" any more absurd than the whole money thing is in the first place?
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> It doesn’t mean anything, they just decided some number. You pain doesn't mean anything,you cant even assign it a number What, you want strong painkillers for your surgery? What does 'a lot of pain' even means? If you can't precisely define how much pain you have I wont give you a prescription. So illogical!