3 ms·

Taxes are not a punishment.

• wiseowise 8mo ago
  They are. Look at the Netherlands, they want to implement taxes on unrealized gains.
  • jdiff 8mo ago
    That's not a punishment.
    • danslo 8mo ago
      It is as long as they're not refunding you when you make a loss.
      • zbentley 8mo ago
        Couldn’t it just as easily be equivalent to saying “you grew this year, so contribute some money back to society for enabling you to have the educated hiring base/financial infrastructure/physical infrastructure that enabled you to grow”? Like, sure, you don’t owe growth taxes for a quarter when you didn’t grow. But why should you be refunded just because prior taxable growth isn’t denominated in money in a bank account?
        • wiseowise 8mo ago
          > you grew this year, so contribute some money back to society for enabling you to have the educated hiring base/financial infrastructure/physical infrastructure that enabled you to grow Apparently paying for gas, water, electricity, property taxes, taxes on everything you buy isn’t enough, now you have to “contribute for enabling”. What’s next? Pay because they “enable you to breathe”?
          • robocat 8mo ago
            Plus ignoring that our society depends on businesses. I have low opinions about unbalanced one sided arguments.
    • wiseowise 8mo ago
      What is it if not a punishment? If you’re a high earner (not obscene earner, mind you) you already pay 50+% in taxes, on top of that you now have to pay even more?
  • RGamma 8mo ago
    The system that exists in Germany has you pay 25% Abgeltungssteuer even on unrealized gains but those taxes can be deducted when you sell. Only in the event you sell at net loss do you not get that back. States are in dire need of liquidity. Just look at global debt.
• dolni 8mo ago
  When a significant share of the taxes you pay are mishandled or lost to fraud, yes it is a punishment. That's been happening for a long time in the US. Staggering military industrial complex. Tens of billions lost in COVID relief. Billions lost in Minnesota due to unchecked privatized social welfare fraud (which has been known about for a decade). Some mistakes will happen. What we have is unacceptable. If the government can't handle the money responsibly, it has no business collecting the money.
  • jdiff 8mo ago
    Do you have any sources for either or both of "billions" and "known about for a decade" that aren't a figurehead of the current US administration? Because this all smells a lot like "the immigrants are catching and eating cats and geese" story which also turned out to be a lie.
    • germinalphrase 8mo ago
      The fraud in Minnesota is upsetting. Fraud also appears to be nationally prevalent: “New federal data released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) shows the overall rate of improper payment in Minnesota’s Medicaid program is far below national averages. In the review released this week, CMS found an error rate of slightly over 2.1%, compared to a national average of 6.1%. The data for the review was compiled before the Minnesota Department of Human Services began implementing new strategies to minimize the risk of fraud and harden its systems against bad actors.” https://mn.gov/dhs/media/news/?id=1053-720779 https://mn.gov/dhs/media/news/?id=1053-720779
  • rswail 8mo ago
    Minnesota is only a drop in the ocean compared to Florida and other states. One of the current FL senators was CEO of one of the companies convicted of a much larger fraud. That's more an indictment of the way you (the US) starve your public services of proper regulatory power with the right level of personnel to handle it. But your Congress voted last year to defund the IRS and the administration are busy gutting the SEC and other regulators. Oh and government fraud has nothing on the commercial and rent-seeker frauds extracting wealth for no benefit from their positions of control. But anti-trust prosecutions are basically a dead path for rectification. Blaming the "government" for what happens from obvious policy failures is the fault of the policies and those that set them, not the "government" as some nameless bureaucracy.
• w4yai 8mo ago
  say that to trump
• lucaspm98 8mo ago
  Taxes are often used as either incentives or disincentives for certain behaviors. Examples of incentives are the Child and Dependent Care Credit and EV Tax Credits. An example of a disincentive is a Mansion Tax.