It's not just economic, it's moral: Rich people should pay MORE tax, says author of Curious Incide

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Does "do the right thing" only apply to those who make over a certain amount?

Doing the right thing should apply to everyone, not just those who make above an arbitrary amount.

Are todays taxes fair? No.

Will forcing the rich to pay more make it fair? No.

A fair, flat tax would eliminate any favouratism to any economic group or level.

I have to say in principle I agree with you, I don't think just because someone earns more than somebody else he should be penalised with a higher % of tax than someone else, that punishes ability and creativity. But those live at the bottom of the ladder will have problems making tax payments no matter how high or low the rate is.

I think the only true fair way is, each person has a living allowance, an amount which is deemed the minimum to live on, and that allowance is not taxed, so say for example in America, the first $20,000 is not taxed then all money over that amount is taxed at a fixed rate irrespective, a simple flat tax of whatever percentage that the people find acceptable.

The real issue people have though is not the tax rate it is the tax avoidance, shifting money round the world to avoid liability on the tax they pay, and this becomes even more obscene when mega corporations make billions upon billions of profit, and yet pa no tax at all and to make it worse even claim tax breaks.

Tax does need to be simple and fair for all, and tax avoidance and evasion need to carry stiff penalties, jail time not fines, and an attached criminal record. A criminal record that then prevents people from owning companies of being an executive officer of a corporation. That would be enough I think to stop the vast majority of the problems

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Perhaps I should have stated "ideally".

Currently, the wealthy play the system.
The poor pay nothing.

And the middle class is stuck paying everything else.

I just want to make it fair. No loopholes. None.

Where are you from? I'm asking because I'm curious as to how you define 'middle-class'. America uses it very differently from Britain and here in Britain, it's often used in a fairly nebulous meaningless way.

Originally posted by Merriman Weir

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Perhaps I should have stated "ideally".

Currently, the wealthy play the system.
The poor pay nothing.

And the middle class is stuck paying everything else.

I just want to make it fair. No loopholes. None.

Where are you from? I'm asking because I'm curious as to how you define 'middle-class'. America uses it very differently from Britain and here in Britain, it's often used in a fairly nebulous meaningless way.

Raised in England.
But call the States my home now.

Originally posted by beezzer

Originally posted by Merriman Weir

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Perhaps I should have stated "ideally".

Currently, the wealthy play the system.
The poor pay nothing.

And the middle class is stuck paying everything else.

I just want to make it fair. No loopholes. None.

Where are you from? I'm asking because I'm curious as to how you define 'middle-class'. America uses it very differently from Britain and here in Britain, it's often used in a fairly nebulous meaningless way.

Raised in England.
But call the States my home now.

well as you'll be aware, Americans tend to use the term 'middle-class' to describe a large demographic (probably the majority of the population) with a much smaller 'elite' at one end and an 'under-class' of some description at the other (I've seen this demographic or set of sub-demographics called a few things on ATS, rarely good things).

Now in Britain, we've been told similar for a long time: we're all middle-class now. Started with Thatcher and her obsession with home ownership and continued by that other neo-liberal Thatcherite Blair. However, the reality is this move up the class league to the middle-classes for the vast majority of people has been a myth and made more 'real' simply due to the access to easy credit that didn't exist 20, 30 years ago. Most people can't really afford the trappings of the middle-class lifestyle that they've been persuaded to buy in to: hence the inflated amount of personal/private debt in this country.

This is important to remember when you say things like 'the middle-classes' are taking the hit. The true middle-class in Britain is actually quite small and the working-class/proles/whatever ever has expanded and split into more sub-divisions than ever.

Originally posted by ollncasino
The award-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has said rich people should pay more tax to save others being hit by government spending cuts.

Mark Haddon, whose book has sold more than two million copies, spawned a stage version and is being adapted as a film by Brad Pitt, said he was ‘not asking just an economic question but a moral one, too'.

Haddon told the Sunday Times he had annoyed his accountant by insisting on paying all tax that was due rather than seeking to avoid it.

'I should be paying more tax,' he said. He revealed the letter was partly inspired by the US billionaire investor Warren Buffet, who has said he should pay more tax, as should other members of America's 'super-rich'.

Haddon, a known critic of the government, has accused the government as being 'a cabal of very wealthy people', out of touch with ordinary life, saying his experience of attending boarding school and Oxford University had shown him 'how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life'.

Daily Mail

Warren Buffet used to point out how unfair it was that his secretary paid a higher proportion of her salary in taxes than he did.

Still, it is true that if rich people are allowed to evade tax and keep their cash they do create new jobs. Au pairs, cooks, gardeners...

Evade comes with jail time and fines, that's not what they are doing. Once it is proven you owe the I.R.S and you don't pay, now that's evading.

It is every American's duty to pay as little tax as possible, you just CAN'T evade. I know that sounds cold, but think it through... Use the same legal means to hide your money.

Spend a little time on your own taxes and you will see how you can ride the same boat as the riches... Same rules apply. Though they have a bit more zeros on their yearly income than I, but it works for me...

If I can get away paying only 15% tax, then I will. It's all legal.. And you know what? You can too... Just spend a little time..

I don't see how any rational person can think everyone paying the same percentage in taxes in unfair.

If everyone pays 10% or 15% with no loopholes then it's a better system than we have now. The person making a million dollars WOULD BE PAYING MORE than the person making 50k. Instead what we say now is if you bust your hump and make a million dollars now your reward is double taxes at 30%. Don't give me crap about the millionaires not having to work for their money. The only way you don't pay taxes is to earn zero income or be listed as someone's dependent.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
I don't see how any rational person can think everyone paying the same percentage in taxes in unfair.

If everyone pays 10% or 15% with no loopholes then it's a better system than we have now. The person making a million dollars WOULD BE PAYING MORE than the person making 50k. Instead what we say now is if you bust your hump and make a million dollars now your reward is double taxes at 30%. Don't give me crap about the millionaires not having to work for their money. The only way you don't pay taxes is to earn zero income or be listed as someone's dependent.

Right, we don't have that system now..

So by all means use the loopholes. And no need to make the word loophole sound so bad. Put a little effort into your own taxes and you will be amazed at what you can save and keep in your own pocket...

reply to post by Merriman Weir


Granted.

Then allow me to rephrase. The wealthy have influenced the tax laws to their benefit. The onus of tax revenue is placed on the working class. those too rich to be on the dole, yet are too poor to have accountants to play their games of "hide the money".

Everyone needs to have skin in the game.

Imagine a 1 page, three line tax form. For everyone.

beezzers tax form

1. How much did you make last year?
2. Multiply that times .08
3. Pay that amount.

Rich, poor, middle-income, no loopholes, no exemptions,no exceptions, no accountants, no lawyers, no hidden accounts, no breaks.

Nada.
None.

reply to post by ollncasino


No they don't. In fact -- the very rich DESTROY jobs through efficiencies and the economies of scale. The whole "10 can do the work of 100" thing.

The only thing that creates jobs is increased demand for goods and services at street level. This is why a bailout for coke-whores, prostitutes and drug dealers is better for the economy than a bailout of investment bankers. A prostitute will eat by a hamburger. The hamburger joint will pay its employees and its utilities. The employee will pay her rent or mortgage. And so on.

Anyone who told you that rich people create jobs was selling you a narrative. It is demonstrably not true.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
I don't see how any rational person can think everyone paying the same percentage in taxes in unfair.

If everyone pays 10% or 15% with no loopholes then it's a better system than we have now. The person making a million dollars WOULD BE PAYING MORE than the person making 50k. Instead what we say now is if you bust your hump and make a million dollars now your reward is double taxes at 30%. Don't give me crap about the millionaires not having to work for their money. The only way you don't pay taxes is to earn zero income or be listed as someone's dependent.

Tax schemes in Britain and the U.S. are very different. In Britain and Europe there's massively convoluted schemes benefiting non-doms, people paid through shell companies and trusts &c. People can, and often do, pay negligible amounts of various forms of tax here. Yeah, they will pay some tax, but it's a tiny fraction of what they receive - I'm reluctant to use the word 'earn' as the truth of it is they don't really 'earn' it in many cases. I regularly read of people 'earning' multiple times the British average salary for working as little as 1 day a month. I'm not sure how that's 'working for their money'. Often these jobs were set-up in advance for when they leave fairly cushy political jobs (again, not really 'working for their money', at least compared to how other people work for far, far less remuneration).

I think, like a lot of things here (guns, politics, taxes) it's important to actually say where a person is coming from, both geographically and metaphorically, when we are chipping in with opinions on some of these threads. The U.S.A. is a very, very different place from much of the world, even places where they share a similar language.

What about a flat rate for a certain income, so all the same tax when you earn for like example 50.000/year max.
Above that you pay more.

- 50.000 all the same tax rate (example: 30%)
- 75.000 35%
- 125.000 45%
- 250.000 55%
- 500.000 60%

- 1.000.000 and more 70%.

Since most people fall below 50.000 perhaps you could even lower the 30% for most of the people when you get a high tax rate for high earners.


That said; we got for example soccer players who earn crazy amount of money and when the club gets in financial problems the city where it's located must bail them out when they have poor results.
You see this allot with Europian soccer clubs for example.

Or for example with big company's, the boss made poor decisions (and get payed millions), the company gets poor results so they lay off workers.. and even when the boss get layed off after a long time, he gets a bag full with money when he got kicked out. While all those people who worked hard which where kicked out got zero of course (no bag of money).

Or what about those wall mark workers, they do all the work basicly and get payed #, while some people get really really rich.

So yea it's really not that bad when (really) high earners pay more taxes IMO (as long the taxes of course get spend well that is!).

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Granted.

Then allow me to rephrase. The wealthy have influenced the tax laws to their benefit. The onus of tax revenue is placed on the working class. those too rich to be on the dole, yet are too poor to have accountants to play their games of "hide the money".

Again, it's not as simple as that. 'Dole', like welfare, is now meaningless as a determiner of anything. The majority of new housing benefit claimants are actually working. They just don't earn enough to actually pay for already partly-subsidised rents. Similarly, other welfare, like working tax credits are claimed by a staggering amount of people. People who are working but still don't earn enough as recognised to be able to stand on their own two feet.

Honestly, people who are "too rich to be on the dole" meaning they are ineligible for working tax credits or any income based allowances (aside from not working requisite hours &c) are generally now thought of as being relatively 'well off' in many, many areas of the country. It's a relative thing I know, but it's an indicator of how wealth, comfortableness and relative poverty is perceived by actual people rather than politicians/statisticians/spin doctors.

Wealth divide and the divide in social mobility are increasing at a rate of knots.

We agree the tax system is broken although we don't quite agree on who is benefiting from it's intentional 'broken-ness'. We both agree that it needs reforming but I'm not convinced by any argument I've seen that suggests flat tax is a better solution (despite needing a solution, quick). We both agree that tax is complicated - and the 'simplicity' of a flat tax is often sold as being the idea's big selling point.

However, I'll admit to wanting to see social mobility and wealth divides fixed as much as I do taxes. I don't see that happening with flat taxes. If it is a case of it ensuring that the rich do pay, as opposed to using squirrelling-techniques (as is happening at an unbelievable rate) an alternative is to just not put up with it and stop these schemes.

Now, we go back to where we started: the people who write these rules are the rich themselves. Whether it's a flat rate or stopping tax loopholes, we still have to get on our knees and ask them very kindly to rewrite the rules in our favour for once. That's not going to happen. Unless, we force their hand of course. And, if we're doing that, we might as well go the whole way and take it all away from them and get rid of them. They've proven themselves to be greedy parasite in a way that far outstrips benefit scroungers and the like, so fark them. Let's get rid of them.

I think what we should do is demand they provide us with a reciept that itemizes what our individual taxes go to.

How would you like to see on your reciept that you paid for a turtle tunnel in California or a study on the mating habits of the spoon billed fish in North Dakota when you have a crumbling infrastructure in your own area?

We are all paying more than our fair share and the government needs to do more with less starting now.

Originally posted by 11235813213455
I think what we should do is demand they provide us with a reciept that itemizes what our individual taxes go to.

But that is the precise false solution the problem is set up to encourage us to grab for.

The hard cold reality is that for every single person who comes up with a way to "Fix" taxes,
the goverment has to add an entire room full of paid full-time people to over see the process and
make sure it's right.


If you want to make noise AND see some real tax solutions,
start using the words abrogate or repeal
and start discussing specific tax laws,
of which there are millions.


Mike Grouchy

The only moral thing to do is to allow people to keep the fruits of their labor and give it out, or not give it out, as THEY see fit.

A few things: Warren Buffet is a buffoon. He is only willing to pay higher income tax because his personal earnings are less than one percent of his total income, most of his money is made as the largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway. He is pushing for higher income taxes because it both sounds good, and doesn't affect him.

The author in the article in the OP is falling for it, diminishing his own wealth, while Warren sits back and laughs. But, whatever.

Despite the title of the OP, this is in fact an economic debate, because if it doesn't make sense economically, there is no point in arguing it morally.

So, how does removing more money from those who are demonstrably better fit to manage it, improve the economy? How do the wealthy, who are so greedy and selfish, expand their wealth without also creating jobs, newer and cheaper products to remain competitive? Diminish their ability to support and expand their businesses, and you also diminish their ability to hire, limiting the number of jobs, AND limiting growth and development, and for both reasons, ultimately, limiting the increase in our living standards.

When was the last time you were hired by a poor person? How many things have you purchased that wouldn't have been available had it not been for some wealthy person's time, money, business sense, etc?

It seems to me that, to acquire, build, and sustain wealth, the rich themselves have to enrich the lives of their societies, and in doing so bring us all into a state of better living standards.

A company cannot force you to buy something, you only deal with those which you want to, and when this isn't the case, it is government, not the business, pushing you along.

The alternative, is to tax these business's to death, have all of the unemployed living off government taxes, and have all the workers being public sector, tax funded jobs.

Big Brother, or Personal Liberty; the choice is yours, will you do what you really want, or what, conveniently, they tell you they want?