this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Ding ding ding.
This is why the rich try to muddy the waters.
They try and make it appear as if the homes and retirement funds of the middle class are somehow equivalent to the hundreds of billions owned by the rich.
Fun fact: if we would tax the rich and lower taxes on the middle class, we would get something closer to socialism. Under pure socialism, where everyone owns an equal share of the total wealth, the average household would actually be worth $1.6M.
Any household with less wealth than that is actually doing worse under the current system compared to full equality.
We need to roll back to 1955 tax rates:
Eisenhower individual income above $200,000 was taxed at 90%, above $300,000 at 91%, and above $400,000 at 92%. That’d trim Musk Bezos etc. down to size, fund education, fund social security etc.
Corporate taxes topped out at 52% - the tax rate was 30% for the first $25,000 in profits that a company made, and 52% for anything over that amount.
Of course, adjust these floors with with inflation taken into account - $300,000 in 1950 = $3,772,843.22 in 2023 - so multimillionaires and up.
Several years ago I came across a graph showing relative tax revenues collected from companies and individuals. I don't remember the details, but there was a time when the tax revenues came mostly (or maybe equally?) from corporate taxes and now they come mostly from personal income taxes.
It seems to me that going back to that would be a good place to start. Once we have companies paying for the systems that allow them to thrive, we can tackle personal wealth/income taxation disparities.
Yup. We literally can't balance the budget with the regressive systems (WA and TX especially where there's no income taxed at all, and everything is built on sales and property taxes because fuck you rich people can afford more lobbyists) in place; the disparity between the ultra rich and poverty grows further every day.
That won't really solve the problem.
The ProPublica leaks showed that Musk, Bezos and Buffet only had incomes around the $100K.
While at the same time, their net worth grew by hundreds of billions.
no single policy change will 'solve' the problem, that's why it's governance, not 'fix it and forget it'. BUT, one thing that would impact this issue greatly would be the:
Tesla, SpaceX, etc., earning money would be taxed and that would impact Musk's value. They hide their money in individual compensation, you tax the individual, they hide it in corporate compensation, you tax them there.
You are not going to hurt them taxing corporate income. Business are even better at hiding their money. All revenue is channeled through 4 subsidiaries and a couple off shore accounts. Technically, all branches, except the one in the country with the lowest corporate tax rate, operate at a "loss".
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
You could try taxing revenue, but that will hurt businesses that are based around high volumes of low value transactions, such as discount retail.
You could try to tax business based on their asset value, but that will murder traditional businesses like farming and manufacturing, which rely on making a large investment in durable assets and then deriving profit over a long period. More importantly, it will not get any taxes out of tech companies, since most of their value is in intellectual property, something that cannot be accurately priced.
LOL guess we can't tax anyone because it never works then.
NOOOPE.
I love people like you who have ALL the answers, know "all the possibilities" - you're so self confident that you really think you know it all. The IRS LOVES people like this.
They love to spend hours and hours with them, in court. Sure a lot of CPAs have created a lot of dodges in the past. The Tax Code evolves. Our government, slowly, changes and adapts to new fuckery.
But thanks for assuring me there's no possibility, your optimism is about as endearing as your confidence.
You are right, I was a cynical ass. I apologize.
What I should have said is:
Adding more or taxes or higher taxes is likely to primarily hit the working upper class. It will not affect the super rich. If we want a tax system that actually makes the most wealthy pay their fair share, we need to close tax loopholes and creative accounting schemes.
TY, I apologize for the snarky response.
In the end, the only way the super rich will pay their share is to innovate in taxation. This is the real reason the IRS needs a few more billion, sure to have more agents, but also to open a quantum taxation R&D unit, I dunno, maybe build them a new kind of super collider, let's see what happens.
Anything is better than shrugging and moping "that's just the way it is."
That policy would impact lawyers, doctors and movie/music stars mostly... Musk, Bezos don't get paid that much, they get paid in stock. When they borrow billions against that stock it counts as debt and don't get taxed.
Totally solvable problems.
Taxing Tesla and SpaceX would certainly impact Musk's bottom line. Personal income is only one side.
There's no single solution, but one thing you'll find in every path to success includes the rich paying a larger share of the tax burden. there's simply no way to have this much disparity between the richest and the poorest without inequities in the tax system.