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> people like doctors rather than billionaires That's not a progressive-tax brackets versus flat-tax thing. That's a "having different rules for different way
by Terr_ 1y ago
> people like doctors rather than billionaires
That's not a progressive-tax brackets versus flat-tax thing.
That's a "having different rules for different ways of making money" thing.
> the complicated system is the thing that allows the billionaires to pay less
Something true of a parts is not necessarily true of the whole, and vice-versa. The reason billionaires pay less than we might expect comes from relatively simple factors, not because the tax-code is too complex for poor people to get the same result.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago> That's a "having different rules for different ways of making money" thing. That's the thing which is a consequence of the existing complexity, which in turn is a consequence of trying to do brackets by income. A flat rate tax is you collect VAT on everything no exceptions, send everyone a check in a fixed amount as the credit to make it progressive no exceptions, and you're done. Different marginal rates is oops, if you use VAT then rich people have poor people go to the store for them so you have to use income tax and track everybody's income. But some people get income from investments and then it's not realized until they cash out, which allows a bunch of fancy tax dodges, but trying to tax unrealized gains has a bunch of other serious problems like liquidity and valuation. Also, you didn't really mean to tax everyone's retirement savings, so now you need a bunch of stuff like 401(k) to undo the thing you didn't really mean to do, and now you have some more complexity. And it continues like this until you turn around and doctors are paying higher taxes than billionaires because billionaires have more resources to navigate all the complexity.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]