7 ms·
Argentina's Senate approves bill to eliminate income tax
- papichulo4 3y agoWhat income?
- sneak 3y agoAs much as I loathe taxation from a fundamentally philosophical standpoint, I think a 20-30x multiple of the minimum (or perhaps a 10-20x multiple of the median) wage is a good floor for income taxes.
- ramraj07 3y agoWhat philosophical premise finds objection with taxation in general??
- sneak 3y agohttps://youtu.be/2fvGasiOkBY https://youtu.be/2fvGasiOkBY is perhaps the best take on it I have ever seen.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoSelf-identification with John Galt?
- mminer237 3y agoPersonally, I find it problematic philosophically that others can unilaterally take your property, but I understand it is practically necessary and justified by agreement to the social contract being implied by one's continued voluntary presence in such polity.
- __loam 3y agoI like your philosophy of "taxation is theft, but roads are pretty cool"
- croes 3y agoYour property? Depends on the country but normally your success benefitted from things like your and your employees's education, police, infrastructure etc. Taxes are a way to pay back. The amount is debatable not the existence as such.
- mminer237 3y agoSure, but justifying such post facto violates the officious intermedler doctrine.
- DrScientist 3y agoYou might not have personally agreed - but society has ( as least in a democracy ). The whole point of centralised laws is it's much more efficient than negotiating with everyone you meet as to whether they will k!ll you and/or take or stuff or not. The scale of interactions in modern societies requires simplification of the management of those interactions - laws and enforcement of - what's allow or not is decided once, not every interaction.
- mminer237 3y agoYeah, like I originally said, even if you don't agree with your taxes specifically, you agree to them as part of society by continuing to exist inside in it. By my philosophy, taxes are justified as long as you have the theoretical legal right to emigrate.
- croes 3y agoIt was your parents decision which nationality you have, by accepting the nationality they accepted the rules and costs, so no officious intermedler. BTW without governments opayed through taxes things like officious intermedler doctrine wouldn't exist instead you get the good old nice-place-you-got-there-be-a-shame-if-anything-happened-to-it doctrine. Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it
- fires10 3y agoI don't understand this comment. Can someone explain it like I'm five?
- DrScientist 3y agoWell the state can also unilaterally take your life ( depending in the country ) and certainly your liberty. And the above is a trade-off, the state polices & punishes murder and theft etc, with an aim of reducing it overall - so you are less likely to be murdered or stolen from. Then this central mechanism needs paying for. Tax is simply a way of paying for it - and it's not voluntary to stop free-riders. The reality is you need government & laws when people start living in complex societies where people are no longer self-sufficient, but rely on a complex web of interactions. Laws are there to arbitrate between people - if you live on a homestead in the mountains they may seem unnecessary - if you live in a big city, where even essentials like food and water depend on a complex web of interactions - they are essential.
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- kimbernator 3y ago"Property" only exists so far as there is law enforcing it and the infrastructure to support it. Taxation is not someone stealing your money, it is the buy-in to a system that allows you to reliably consider things you have to be your property.
- lawlessone 3y agoTo add to this, how to we value property? in the state issued currency..
- johngladtj 3y agoYeah, no that's not true. Property exists even in stateless societies
- ramraj07 3y agoAnd you’d be spending resources on securing it and keeping it in your hands. Taxes are to buy in to a system that lets you sit at peace and not be constantly vigilant.
- johngladtj 3y agoYou're spending those resources regardless, at least you get to be the deciding how much to spend, and where, rather than having that decision taken from you
- carlosjobim 3y agoTaxation of labour is not somebody stealing your property, it is somebody stealing your work – which is a thousand times worse, since it is a form of forced servitude. There is no "system" and has never been any system, there's only people exploiting other people. An income tax is just a fancy abstraction over ancient and base serfdom. Most labourers have no property to speak of, and never had. If it's a "buy-in" to a system people should have a way to "buy out" as well, which of course doesn't happen, because there never was any "buy-in", it was "pay us your wages or we'll hunt you down". Slaves could buy their own freedom in Rome and other places, so why can't "free" people under taxation? Property rights should rank far lower than human rights. So if you want to collect taxes, go after property instead of after people. But it is the property owning class who runs the two-sided coin of capitalism/socialism, so good luck on that.
- lawlessone 3y agoLibertarians as an example. I don't agree with them. I think many of the people objecting to taxes have a rather rosy view of the times when taxes didn't exist. To me it's like similar to full communism, both of them mean well but in practice don't work well. If you get more out of a system than someone else you should be probably willing or want too contribute more to it's upkeep.
- jewayne 3y ago> I think many of the people objecting to taxes have a rather rosy view of the times when taxes didn't exist. I think they also don't know how long the history of taxation really is. Taxation is pretty much as old as civilization itself.
- lawlessone 3y agoYes, most of the periods with no official taxation are usually dark ages :( ..Or the paleolithic. Or it was called a tithe etc
- CydeWeys 3y agoOh they know, they just discount it for some reason. Also, as a general rule, libertarians seem to care less for civilization than the rest of us. Hence why they're way more likely to be attracted to self-sufficient/off-the-grid/prepper lifestyles.
- nvm0n2 3y agoThe problem with the latter paragraph is that the poor usually get a lot more out of government than they put in.
- tivert 3y ago> What philosophical premise finds objection with taxation in general?? Extreme libertarianism, which is seriously flawed, but people still fall for it (out of greed and/or seduction by an oversimple toy model that can't actually work in practice).
- sneak 3y agoI think it is philosophically sound that property rights are natural rights and that use of violent coercion to violate those rights is a basic violation of human rights. You may believe that a violation of people’s natural rights to own things and be free from violent coercion is justified in service of building a central government, but it is still a human rights violation.
- DrScientist 3y agoWhat's a 'natural right'? Surely all it is, is something most people agree on. Take ownership of land for example - doesn't really make sense - at some point it wasn't 'owned' then somebody declared they owned it and could pass that right on in perpetuity. Such a construct doesn't exist outside a system of laws ( created from an agreement from the majority of people ) - it's not some magic 'natural right'.
- sneak 3y agoI don’t believe that land ownership is a natural right, for the same reasons that I believe that personal property is. They are very different concepts.
- DrScientist 3y agoPersonal property is made from a bit of the earth - space dust that has aggregated by gravity. Again there is no 'natural right' - just something most people agree makes sense. The idea of rights was a tool to try to get wide agreement ( internationally ) on the basics that most people agree on whatever culture. It's a useful tool - but to imbue some sort of existence outside society is an attempt at a Jedi mind trick.
- stronglikedan 3y agoMorality. Income tax is theft. A lean national government can work off tariffs and fees alone. Local governments can supplement that with sales tax.
- badcppdev 3y agoWhy is income tax theft but sales tax not? Surely selling your time for money is analogous to selling an object for money
- danpalmer 3y agoSales tax has a disproportionate negative impact those at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, whereas income tax is easier to balance.
- qwerasdf5 3y agoSales tax can have exclusions, just as income tax does.
- danpalmer 3y agoSales tax can't really exclude people based on ability to pay though. I've never heard of a means-tested sales tax, it's not practical. You can exclude basics, in the UK our VAT which is similar to a sales tax is not applied to most groceries, kids clothing, etc. It's easier to just have an income/property/land/inheritance tax, things that target wealth or income, vs things that target spending. Those with less money tend to spend a higher proportion of their money, so taxing spending targets them.
- sneak 3y agoThe idea that all people have a human right to be free from violent coercion. Almost nobody would pay taxes if there weren’t the implicit threat of a man with a gun.
- DrScientist 3y ago> The idea that all people have a human right to be free from violent coercion. And do you think you'd be free of violence in a government free world? Sure, in the end, all laws are enforced by physical violence - arrest, imprisonment etc - but that just underlines the physical nature of the world - the threat of a man with a gun doesn't go away when you remove collective will.
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- notahacker 3y agoAlmost nobody would respect property rights if there wasn't the implicit threat of a man with a gun either, so the stuff would all get taken by someone else anyway.
- sneak 3y agoNegative rights versus positive rights, this is an old and well-documented dichotomy. Positive rights are a fiction to euphemize theft and slavery. From a purely logical standpoint, negative rights can be the only true rights.
- notahacker 3y ago"Theft" is something which can't even exist in the absence of consensus on which objects you have the right to compel others to refraining from using. We have that consensus, and relatively efficient enforcement of it, it just happens to disagree with you on what stuff's inalienably yours.
- louthy 3y agoPhilosophically, I like public roads, hospitals, schools, policing, rubbish collection, etc.
- Eumenes 3y agoPhilosophically, if those services deteriorate beyond repair and are riff with corruption/nepotism, the people have the right to object, by any means necessary. The efficiency of our tax dollars, in the US at least, is prob very low. I wonder for every $1 of tax revenue collected, how much of that is used for actual public good. 20%?
- louthy 3y ago> Philosophically, if those services deteriorate beyond repair and are riff with corruption/nepotism, the people have the right to object, by any means necessary. Is that a taxation problem or a corruption problem? Fix the corruption first.
- Eumenes 3y agoExcessive capital in the hands of centralized government breeds corruption. They get to send $100s of millions, sometimes billions, to corporations and foreign nations. This leads to bribery and kickbacks. The US has people in government who are worth $100s of millions of dollars off salaries that would be entry level in Silicon Valley.
- louthy 3y ago> This leads to bribery and kickback Which is illegal in most countries. Police the illegality (you probably need a well funded police force for that) and the corruption will reduce significantly. It’s true that not all corruption can be stopped. But if you think privatising everything will make your dollars more efficient then you’re living in a fantasy world. Look at the mess that is the US healthcare system for a start: twice as expensive as every other country’s healthcare system and certainly not the best
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- sdfghswe 3y agoWhenever someone says "philosophically" I take it as "I simplified the problem so much it no longer has any connection to reality, but at least I reached a firm conclusion". Nobody owes so much to the system they despise as much as libertarians.
- duxup 3y agoFrom a larger economic standpoint, isn't this kinda a problem when the issues are running massive deficits already? Also apparently Dec 10 a new government takes control so is this just meant to put pressure on them?
- jewayne 3y ago> you're issues They are people. They are not issues.
- londons_explore 3y agoI assume they plan to make up for missing revenue with increased sales taxes...
- LordShredda 3y agoThere's other kinds of taxes, and people spending more money means these other taxes bring in more to compensate
- marcosdumay 3y agoWell, it's not that simple. Economies almost never regret putting money on the pockets of the poorest people (TBH, I'm having a hard time justifying that "almost" up there, but there must be an exception somewhere). As a rule, South America has a corruption problem. Not exactly a "government spends too much" one. And Argentina is clearly not an exception to that rule. But yeah, all else being equal, that's prone to create even more inflation. If it will also improve people's life enough to be a positive is up to be seen.
- raverbashing 3y agoThat's exactly it Don't read more into this than an attempt at electoral cheap shots
- Findeton 3y agoIt's just not true. They want to eliminate capital gains tax on income. Which shouldn't ever exist.
- mannycalavera42 3y agoall public services going private then? ... interesting!
- MattGaiser 3y agoDoes Argentina just not care about inflation at this point?
- gbaygon 3y agoits normal now, everybody knows how to work with it - buy with credit payable in 6/12 months, take advantage of government credit to offset it (often such credits are below inflation) Also buy street dollar (blue) with whatever you manage to save, etc - to sell it later to preserve value At this point after many decades of inflation every argentinian is a hobbyist economist himself (otherwise you couldn’t make it month to month)
- TulliusCicero 3y agoSurely there are still downsides to the wider economy even if people have managed to adapt?
- gbaygon 3y agoyes major downsides, these are only strategies to get by
- aiunboxed 3y agoHmm, hopefully people have enough avenues to match the extra income that they are going to generate
- sdfghswe 3y agoI think once you're past 100% you're fucked anyway. Might as well YOLO it.
- TacticalCoder 3y agoThe US is way past 100% now: https://www.usdebtclock.org/ https://www.usdebtclock.org/
- Andrew018 3y ago[dead]
- bitdivision 3y agoThe Economist did a nice video around some of the issues facing Argentina at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18RTtDVghfw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18RTtDVghfw
- croes 3y ago> Your expenses are too high. > So we'll lower our income So either public service will be reduced or they get a hefty fee or they create new taxes on other things
- pcostesi 3y agoOr they keep doing what they are doing, which is to print money and liquidity letters of credit (leliqs).
- _8j50 3y agoThere needs to be a livable part of the planet which isn't a country and never can be but individuals and expelled people can go there. No military or aid interference of any kind, no taxes or laws but also no import/export commerce, communication or organizing of any government or militia/military will be allowed. Imagine the wild west but wilder and more "mad max". Patagonia or parts of australia or andes would be nice.
- MattGaiser 3y agoNo laws but also plenty of rules, but no government to enforce those rules?
- _8j50 3y agoThe governments that establish the land (world countries' govs) will be enforcers monitoring from outside in to enforce the rules (not laws because violation is summary execution).
- axutio 3y ago> No military or aid interference of any kind, no taxes or laws but also no import/export commerce, communication or organizing of any government or militia/military will be allowed Who is going to enforce this?
- TulliusCicero 3y agoDing ding ding. The fundamental problem of non-state societies: who's gonna stop a state from taking over, either from within or without?
- _8j50 3y agoEveryone else by mutual agreement since this dumping ground benefits every country.
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- userinanother 3y ago[flagged]
- gbaygon 3y agoKeep in mind that in reality it raises the floor to 1900 dollars/ month for workers only. Thats at today’s black market exchange rate (article cites non existent official rate). With the rapid inflation we are experiencing (likely going hyper) that floor will get back to normal soon. We’ll se what next president does. source: I’m Argentinian
- CydeWeys 3y agoUS$1,900/month seems like too high of a floor to pay no taxes on for Argentina. That floor makes more sense for the world's richest countries.
- thatfrenchguy 3y agoNo income taxes doesn’t mean no taxes, most countries (and states in the US) with low income taxes fund themselves with less redistributing taxes.
- gbaygon 3y agoyes but in an hyperinflationary scenario it won’t last long (laws are defined in pesos) so it could be back to sub 800 soon
- gzalo 3y agoArgentinian here. Article has some flaws that could cause a different perception of the situation: - The income tax isn't really "eliminated", that's not right, it just has a higher starting point and is now indexed to the monthly wage. Otherwise it required yearly updates that were quite messy. It starts to apply to gross salaries above 15x the minimum monthly wage (the starting point used to be WAY lower). - 1.7 million pesos isn't really 5k USD, as no one has access to that exchange rate. It's more like 1800~2000 USD monthly. Overall I think it's a good measure, but it still doesn't tackle the elephant(s) in the room: Having >40% poverty, having an unrealistic exchange rate, low minimum wage, informal economy and workers, problems renting/buying real-state, unsatisfactory education results...
- TulliusCicero 3y agoArgentina already has very high inflation, doesn't it? Won't this lead to money printing that will make the problem even worse?
- kwanbix 3y agoAlso that. Is an "electionist" meassure by the current president Sergio Massa (he is not officially president, but he is acting like one for more than a year) who is running for president.
- carlosjobim 3y agoHow would that lead to any money printing? Labourers cannot print any money.
- wuliwong 3y agoI am guessing that the reasoning is with less income tax revenue for the government, they will need to create more money to pay the bills. The only way to prevent this would be to reduce the spending the same amount as the reduction in tax revenue.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoBecause less tax revenue means that the government would print more money to pay its bills.
- Hizonner 3y agoSo what taxes will they have left?
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoTaxes on goods and services, esp. the VAT; personal income tax on high earners (despite the article's title); social security contributions; and corporate income taxes will be the main ones (not necessarily in that order). https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/revenue-statistics-latin-america-and-caribbean-argentina.pdf https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/revenue-statistics-latin...
- droptablemain 3y agoI can't speak to the economic side of this, but intuitively, the idea that one required to sell their labor to survive must pay taxes on that, has always rubbed me the wrong way. Interestingly enough, the DPRK ("North Korea") outlawed income taxes in 1974, calling them "remnants of an antiquated society."
- justrealist 3y ago> Interestingly enough, the DPRK ("North Korea") outlawed income taxes in 1974 Yes they discovered that slavery has lower deadweight loss.
- droptablemain 3y agoYes, so says Western propaganda. Drink it up!
- justrealist 3y agoTruly, propaganda https://www.38north.org/2023/04/a-fresh-look-at-north-korea-at-night/ https://www.38north.org/2023/04/a-fresh-look-at-north-korea-...
- TulliusCicero 3y agoSociety needs money to function, and income is roughly as sensible to tax as other things. Having a floor that exempts low incomes is probably fine and good though.
- dantheman 3y agoSociety needs far less money to function than is captured by taxes. There are US states without an income tax - the majority of government spending that is relevant to an individual is provided the state government in the US.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
- frozenlettuce 3y agoIt's interesting that the article doesn't mention Javier Milei - maybe the intention from the Minister/Candidate was showing up as a someone who is economic liberal to counter his surging in the polls
- rando_dfad 3y agoThere is an interesting and economically well-motivated argument that income tax should be eliminated everywhere. The argument agrees (as do I) that it is right for the government to collect taxes, and that many individuals (including myself) should pay taxes; believe me, I like having a stable society!! -- but "income" is not a good basis. It comes down to two things: ownership and also what government should encourage (taxes are a way of "discouraging" things by adding an additional cost). Labor. I and only I own my labor, else I am a slave. On what basis does the government have rights to the fruits of this? Why discourage me from employing my labor to the benefit of my countrymen? Capital. If I deploy my capital, hopefully to make other's labor more efficient, I am taking the risk. Why should the government also charge me for this? Why discourage me from investing? Land. Ahhh, here we have something. My ownership of my land is a right granted by the government (unlike my ownership of my labor). And land is only (economically) good for rent-seeking, which is economically harmful. Taxes on land could fully fund the government, provide the wealth redistribution which is necessary to keep capitalist economies functioning for more than a few generations, and aligns with the foundational principles of democratic governments (natural law, rights of man vs government, etc). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoLand taxes make sense. But so do the others. Your participation in any market is only possible thanks to the government.
- azmodeus 3y agoTaxing income is much easier, than capital. Capital can flee easily while it's harder for workers with families to move.
- germandiago 3y agoI have been following Argentina for the las three years. I am spanish. This and a recent tax decrease have been forced by the fact that Milei has a strong first position as a candidate.Otherwise it would have never happened. It is all acting. Greetings.
- ankaAr 3y agoArgentinian here, we are so deep in the sh*t that in few days we will be paying this tax again because inflation.
- vhcr 3y agoTake in mind this is only for employees, independent workers that sell services earning more than $8M pesos (about $8700), or $11.3M for goods ($12300) will still have to pay the standard 35% rate.