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The top 1% of NYC residents contribute 40-48% of all personal income tax collected in NYC. When you extend that to Top 2.5% you cross 51%. Personal Income Tax

The top 1% of NYC residents contribute 40-48% of all personal income tax collected in NYC. When you extend that to Top 2.5% you cross 51%. Personal Income Tax accounts for around 31% of collected NYC tax revenue. "The rich" also pay property tax. NYC's poorer residents generally don't have property to pay tax on. Everyone pays sales tax equally. So how exactly are the ultra rich paying "less taxes"?

2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago
Voters don't feel like it's a fair deal. Telling voters that their concerns aren't real is a losing strategy.
- busterarm 5mo ago
  If you live in New York you rolled at least a 15 on life's D20. That's how good of an opportunity that location is. I started and lived most of my life there and started in poverty -- for there. That's still a better opportunity than most people ever get. All these people pointing at the nat 20s losing their minds screaming like they rolled 1s.
jjav 5mo ago
Surely you know this, but the rich are paying less percentage taxes relative to the money they have.
- busterarm 5mo ago
  I'm familiar with the concept of crabs in a bucket, yes. That's why I left New York and abandoned my rent controlled apartment to do so.
  - lovich 5mo ago
    Oh shit, I didn’t realize the billionaires who can have multiple homes in Manhattan are crabs in the same bucket as us. Luckily the law is much more egalatarian and bars the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges or stealing bread.
    - busterarm 5mo ago
      NYC only has 154 billionaires. The percentage of NYC's second homes owned by NYC billionaires is fractional (59,000 total units). No, this will disproportionately negatively affect middle-class people and families and fuck them hard. > I didn’t realize the billionaires ... are crabs in the same bucket as us. All of us go to the same place in the end my dude. Life is too short and too hard to spend all your time living by comparisons. I'm sure the people you're worried about are just as miserable for other reasons.
      - lovich 5mo ago
        If you have a second home in manhattan, you are not the middle class _and_ you can afford it. If the idea of paying taxes affects your poor fragile mind so negatively then there is an easy solution where you can sell said extra home. No one is being fucked hard by this other than people who are appalled at the thought that they need to contribute to society for the negative externalities they create, like accumulating excess shelter in regions with a dearth of housing capacity.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
9dev 5mo ago
This claim is often repeated but simply misleading. Taxable income is only a tiny fraction of the wealth of ultra rich folks - many even take symbolic wages, because their real compensation happens in stock, which they can use to lend effectively infinite money. There's a great episode of the Ezra Klein Show on this topic too[0]. [0]: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Jjy4drElYHNMRtxVQPENR?si=5f8a5108c37743d4 https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Jjy4drElYHNMRtxVQPENR?si=5...
- AdrianB1 5mo ago
  That does not address the point. You say they should pay even more to address the idea that very few people pay most of the taxes, what is the logic here?
  - 9dev 5mo ago
    I'm not. I'm saying that the numbers OP stated were misleading. They refer to people with a high income - surgeons, laywers, or engineers -, but not the ultra rich, which don't have a high income in the first place, or it's a tiny slice of their cash flow, while the majority of it is made via non-taxable or low-taxed income streams. Which means that a lot of people pay a proportionally high percentage of their income, while the Epstein class pays effectively none. That's the logic here.
  - idle_zealot 5mo ago
    You're insisting on shifting framing to percentage of tax collected. That's irrelevant to the fairness question of percentage of income paid as taxes. The insane imbalance where the rich end up paying half of all taxes while simultaneously paying a fraction of their proportional wealth in taxes only highlights the massive difference in personal wealth. Taxing that at a higher rate only seems unfair if you take the view that all wealth is earned fairly and any attempt at altering the market's allocation of wealth is against the natural order.
- WarmWash 5mo ago
  I'm someone who uses the same "loophole" the wealthy use to "avoid" paying taxes. Turns out you really only need around ~$100k to unlock it, and you still will pay ~0.5% interest over the overnight lending rate. But it's about as rock bottom as any non-united-states-government will get a dollar denominated loan for. But it is not a tax dodging scheme. It's a tax deferral scheme wrapped in a risk-on loan package, that is used almost entirely to maintain ownership of a company rather than to defer taxes. On smaller scales you can use it to unlock money tied up in stocks, if you think the stock will keep going up (if the stock falls, you now might get margin called as well as coming out worse then just getting a regular loan).
nickv 5mo ago
Because wealth is also distributed in a very lumpy way across the city. 154 residents of NYC own 33% of the entire wealth of the city... notice I didn't say 1%, I said top 154. They are not contributing 33% of the tax income to the city. So yes, the ultra rich pay "less taxes" if you look at how much of the resident wealth they control. Also, property taxes are significantly lower than appraised value and the richer you get the bigger the disparity. That Ken Griffin’s $238M penthouse pied-a-terre? It's assessed value is $9M. So yea, he's paying like $150k/yr in property taxes. And finally, it is a known fact that sales tax definitely hits poor people harder (re: "everyone pays sale tax equally"). What you want to look at is what percentage of a person's post taxincome vs sales tax paid, because if you make like $60k/yr you're probably close to 60% of all post tax income paying some form of sales tax (you buy with all the money you make). If you have $2B, your percentage of "tax paid as sales tax" is significantly lower, because you don't typically spend a billion dollars the same way you spend $60k.
- AdrianB1 5mo ago
  Wealth distribution is a false flag. Rain distribution across the globe is not equal, solar light distribution is not equal and they impact people's life more than wealth distribution. USA and the entire planet's population is at record high in living standards and wealth, but some people are still unhappy because not everything is perfectly equal and at zero entropy like the thermal death of the universe: this is more than illogical, it is just envy without limits.
  - fumar 5mo ago
    A false flag to what?
    - AdrianB1 5mo ago
      A false flag to fight for. A wrong purpose in life.
  - mjamesaustin 5mo ago
    Imagine 1.6% of the earth receiving nearly 50% of all sunlight, and 82% of the earth only receiving 12% of all precipitation. If rain distribution and solar light distribution were even half as unequal as wealth distribution, our global ecosystem would collapse.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago

Voters don't feel like it's a fair deal. Telling voters that their concerns aren't real is a losing strategy.

busterarm 5mo ago
If you live in New York you rolled at least a 15 on life's D20. That's how good of an opportunity that location is. I started and lived most of my life there and started in poverty -- for there. That's still a better opportunity than most people ever get. All these people pointing at the nat 20s losing their minds screaming like they rolled 1s.

jjav 5mo ago

Surely you know this, but the rich are paying less percentage taxes relative to the money they have.

busterarm 5mo ago
I'm familiar with the concept of crabs in a bucket, yes. That's why I left New York and abandoned my rent controlled apartment to do so.
- lovich 5mo ago
  Oh shit, I didn’t realize the billionaires who can have multiple homes in Manhattan are crabs in the same bucket as us. Luckily the law is much more egalatarian and bars the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges or stealing bread.
  - busterarm 5mo ago
    NYC only has 154 billionaires. The percentage of NYC's second homes owned by NYC billionaires is fractional (59,000 total units). No, this will disproportionately negatively affect middle-class people and families and fuck them hard. > I didn’t realize the billionaires ... are crabs in the same bucket as us. All of us go to the same place in the end my dude. Life is too short and too hard to spend all your time living by comparisons. I'm sure the people you're worried about are just as miserable for other reasons.
    - lovich 5mo ago
      If you have a second home in manhattan, you are not the middle class _and_ you can afford it. If the idea of paying taxes affects your poor fragile mind so negatively then there is an easy solution where you can sell said extra home. No one is being fucked hard by this other than people who are appalled at the thought that they need to contribute to society for the negative externalities they create, like accumulating excess shelter in regions with a dearth of housing capacity.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]

9dev 5mo ago

This claim is often repeated but simply misleading. Taxable income is only a tiny fraction of the wealth of ultra rich folks - many even take symbolic wages, because their real compensation happens in stock, which they can use to lend effectively infinite money. There's a great episode of the Ezra Klein Show on this topic too[0]. [0]: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Jjy4drElYHNMRtxVQPENR?si=5f8a5108c37743d4 https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Jjy4drElYHNMRtxVQPENR?si=5...

AdrianB1 5mo ago
That does not address the point. You say they should pay even more to address the idea that very few people pay most of the taxes, what is the logic here?
- 9dev 5mo ago
  I'm not. I'm saying that the numbers OP stated were misleading. They refer to people with a high income - surgeons, laywers, or engineers -, but not the ultra rich, which don't have a high income in the first place, or it's a tiny slice of their cash flow, while the majority of it is made via non-taxable or low-taxed income streams. Which means that a lot of people pay a proportionally high percentage of their income, while the Epstein class pays effectively none. That's the logic here.
- idle_zealot 5mo ago
  You're insisting on shifting framing to percentage of tax collected. That's irrelevant to the fairness question of percentage of income paid as taxes. The insane imbalance where the rich end up paying half of all taxes while simultaneously paying a fraction of their proportional wealth in taxes only highlights the massive difference in personal wealth. Taxing that at a higher rate only seems unfair if you take the view that all wealth is earned fairly and any attempt at altering the market's allocation of wealth is against the natural order.
WarmWash 5mo ago
I'm someone who uses the same "loophole" the wealthy use to "avoid" paying taxes. Turns out you really only need around ~$100k to unlock it, and you still will pay ~0.5% interest over the overnight lending rate. But it's about as rock bottom as any non-united-states-government will get a dollar denominated loan for. But it is not a tax dodging scheme. It's a tax deferral scheme wrapped in a risk-on loan package, that is used almost entirely to maintain ownership of a company rather than to defer taxes. On smaller scales you can use it to unlock money tied up in stocks, if you think the stock will keep going up (if the stock falls, you now might get margin called as well as coming out worse then just getting a regular loan).

nickv 5mo ago

Because wealth is also distributed in a very lumpy way across the city. 154 residents of NYC own 33% of the entire wealth of the city... notice I didn't say 1%, I said top 154. They are not contributing 33% of the tax income to the city. So yes, the ultra rich pay "less taxes" if you look at how much of the resident wealth they control. Also, property taxes are significantly lower than appraised value and the richer you get the bigger the disparity. That Ken Griffin’s $238M penthouse pied-a-terre? It's assessed value is $9M. So yea, he's paying like $150k/yr in property taxes. And finally, it is a known fact that sales tax definitely hits poor people harder (re: "everyone pays sale tax equally"). What you want to look at is what percentage of a person's post taxincome vs sales tax paid, because if you make like $60k/yr you're probably close to 60% of all post tax income paying some form of sales tax (you buy with all the money you make). If you have $2B, your percentage of "tax paid as sales tax" is significantly lower, because you don't typically spend a billion dollars the same way you spend $60k.

AdrianB1 5mo ago
Wealth distribution is a false flag. Rain distribution across the globe is not equal, solar light distribution is not equal and they impact people's life more than wealth distribution. USA and the entire planet's population is at record high in living standards and wealth, but some people are still unhappy because not everything is perfectly equal and at zero entropy like the thermal death of the universe: this is more than illogical, it is just envy without limits.
- fumar 5mo ago
  A false flag to what?
  - AdrianB1 5mo ago
    A false flag to fight for. A wrong purpose in life.
- mjamesaustin 5mo ago
  Imagine 1.6% of the earth receiving nearly 50% of all sunlight, and 82% of the earth only receiving 12% of all precipitation. If rain distribution and solar light distribution were even half as unequal as wealth distribution, our global ecosystem would collapse.