Should taxes be raised on the wealthiest people?

[Thales750]

I was thinking maybe we could move away from repeating ourselves about the merits of one party, over the other. And, have a conversation about a specific topic.
What do you think?

 

[AccessBlaster]

I was thinking maybe we could move away from repeating ourselves about the merits of one party, over the other. And, have a conversation about a specific topic.
What do you think?

This topic will still become politically driven because some people will argue to increase the "progressive tax" while others will argue for a "flat tax." I suspect it will fall along party lines with a few identifying as moderates. We've tried the progressive tax with no end in sight, it only gets more and more progressive as the title of this thread implies. "Should taxes be raised on the wealthiest people?" Maybe we should try something different, just saying.

 

[Mike Krailo]

That is a loaded question. Federal taxes? State taxes? Sales taxes? Raised from what current level? Taxes on unrealised investment gains? The worst kind of tax is the one where the government enables millons of non citizens to demand everything for absolutely nothing in return creating a burden on everyone regardless of status. The most insidious type of tax is inflation caused by printing money we don't have, again affecting everyone no matter the status.

It's like asking "Should a guitar player turn the bias level on their tube amp well beyond a safe level to get a really killer sound? If you don't mind destroying the tube amp every performance, then go right ahead. The guitar amp doesn't care if your wealthy or not, it will still have a very short lived existance if is pushed beyond its limits.

 

[Lightwave]

No we should not
I personally want less taxes which are simpler...

So I would go for lower income taxes at flat rates..

I would however max out capital gains tax on land and buildings UNLESS you actually build.. BUT this would be for everyone not just the wealthy.
I would have low capital gains on share ownership as well.. I have no problem with encouraging capital allocation liquidity.

I think there's good evidence that passive investment in land and property overflates housing which is counter productive especially for people getting started.

Earn money earn lots of money and keep that money but don't monopolise land and property with it..
Fine by me if you want max out VAT on luxuries we know from alcohol that people will still spend money on luxuries even with very high goods taxes.

I haven't figured out my position on inheritance tax yet.

 

[Steve R.]

Instead of raising taxes, how about reducing federal spending. As @Mike Krailo noted, this is a loaded question, Democrats want to tax more so that they can spend more. Moreover, our tax policies are simply a transference of wealth. Essentially "steal" from the "rich" to give "stolen" money to the "poor".

Alternatively, instead of having an income based tax rate, how about having a value added tax.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I'm a firm believer in the free enterprise system with some regulations related to waste management if that enterprise involve manufacturing, and similar regulations on other deleterious side-effects of a business. I must admit to having mixed emotions when the business is a doughnut or pastry shop. There, the deleterious side-effect is centered on my waistline. (We ALL have our selective weaknesses...)

More directly in answer to your topic question, I ALSO believe that we need to keep taxes low AND require both the state and federal governments to live within their means. Yes, trending towards balanced budgets all around. This would force government to do less, to maximize effect for the money they have. As welfare rolls start getting tight enough to require selectivity of grants and awards, it would eventually lead to forcing some real slackers to do more for themselves. This country was built on self-reliance. If you REALLY want to make America great again, return to a level of self-reliance.

The government that governs least governs best.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Flat taxes, tariffs on hostel actors, and drill baby drill.

Edit: Stop printing money.
There I solved the entire tax code, you are welcome

 

[Isaac]

I was thinking maybe we could move away from repeating ourselves about the merits of one party, over the other. And, have a conversation about a specific topic.
What do you think?

Sure. All people should pay the same percentage in my opinion. I've seen it work perfectly fine for a church tithe. 10% is the same pain to a poor person as 10% is to a wealthy person, hence the percent. No, taxes should not be raised on the wealthiest people - they already are.

 

[Thales750]

That is a loaded question. Federal taxes? State taxes? Sales taxes? Raised from what current level? Taxes on unrealised investment gains? The worst kind of tax is the one where the government enables millons of non citizens to demand everything for absolutely nothing in return creating a burden on everyone regardless of status. The most insidious type of tax is inflation caused by printing money we don't have, again affecting everyone no matter the status.

It's like asking "Should a guitar player turn the bias level on their tube amp well beyond a safe level to get a really killer sound? If you don't mind destroying the tube amp every performance, then go right ahead. The guitar amp doesn't care if your wealthy or not, it will still have a very short lived existance it is pushed beyond its limits.

Federal Taxes, you can easily move to another location,

 

[Thales750]

That is a loaded question. Federal taxes? State taxes? Sales taxes? Raised from what current level? Taxes on unrealised investment gains? The worst kind of tax is the one where the government enables millons of non citizens to demand everything for absolutely nothing in return creating a burden on everyone regardless of status. The most insidious type of tax is inflation caused by printing money we don't have, again affecting everyone no matter the status.

It's like asking "Should a guitar player turn the bias level on their tube amp well beyond a safe level to get a really killer sound? If you don't mind destroying the tube amp every performance, then go right ahead. The guitar amp doesn't care if your wealthy or not, it will still have a very short lived existance it is pushed beyond its limits.

Have you ever considered offering up an answer, for any point at all, that was not on the Atilla the Hun right side of things?

 

[Thales750]

This topic will still become politically driven because some people will argue to increase the "progressive tax" while others will argue for a "flat tax." I suspect it will fall along party lines with a few identifying as moderates. We've tried the progressive tax with no end in sight, it only gets more and more progressive as the title of this thread implies. "Should taxes be raised on the wealthiest people?" Maybe we should try something different, just saying.

The Flat tax thing is interesting. Have you ever noticed who the ones are, that are promoting it? if you are a middle class earner, how does it help you?

 

[Thales750]

Sure. All people should pay the same percentage in my opinion. I've seen it work perfectly fine for a church tithe. 10% is the same pain to a poor person as 10% is to a wealthy person, hence the percent. No, taxes should not be raised on the wealthiest people - they already are.

How does society benefit from a flat tax?

 

[Thales750]

Flat taxes, tariffs on hostel actors, and drill baby drill.

Edit: Stop printing money.
There I solved the entire tax code, you are welcome

Glib, but not really useful.

 

[Thales750]

I'm a firm believer in the free enterprise system with some regulations related to waste management if that enterprise involve manufacturing, and similar regulations on other deleterious side-effects of a business. I must admit to having mixed emotions when the business is a doughnut or pastry shop. There, the deleterious side-effect is centered on my waistline. (We ALL have our selective weaknesses...)

More directly in answer to your topic question, I ALSO believe that we need to keep taxes low AND require both the state and federal governments to live within their means. Yes, trending towards balanced budgets all around. This would force government to do less, to maximize effect for the money they have. As welfare rolls start getting tight enough to require selectivity of grants and awards, it would eventually lead to forcing some real slackers to do more for themselves. This country was built on self-reliance. If you REALLY want to make America great again, return to a level of self-reliance.

The government that governs least governs best.

Have you ever tried to sort out and write down how you are coming to those conclusions?

 

[AccessBlaster]

The Flat tax thing is interesting. Have you ever noticed who the ones are, that are promoting it? if you are a middle class earner, how does it help you?

It simplifies the process obviously, it eliminates thousands of pages of gobbledygook in the current tax code. Second, if I know I owe 10% to the government it's easy math no third party is needed.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I would have low capital gains on share ownership as well.. I have no problem with encouraging capital allocation liquidity.

The reason that long term gains are usually taxed at a more favorable rate than ordinary income is because someone was smart enough to realize that capital gains include inflation (which is government caused for the most part) so the longer you've held something the more its selling price has been impacted by inflation rather than true appreciation.

The flat tax sounds good on paper but it will never, ever happen. Why? There are too many businesses and therefore people who earn their living off the stupidity of our tax code - not even including the IRS itself. If you have a tax question and call the IRS for an answer, they will tell you that you may not be able to rely on their answer. So, if the employees of the IRS cannot understand the tax code well enough to explain it to you, there is something wrong with this picture. The best we can hope for is a better proportional scaling of the rates. Having 5 rates (or whatever we have today) is very bad for the low end earners. It would be far better to have 100 smaller steps. It's like a database, a table with a million rows is no more complex than a table with 10 rows. It is all those deductions that make the tax code more complex. Having 100 steps, allows the very poor to pay a very small amount of tax every year. The point being to make sure they understand that government money comes from THEM. It is not simply "free" money. The wealthy already pay a disproportionate percentage of the tax burden despite all their deductions. They could pay more and some effort should be made to simplify the tax code by reducing deductions, especially deductions that are only available to a certain class of people.

But, as the others have already mentioned, the real problem is that government has no incentive to live within their means. Not to disparage Navy men whom I dearly love (in my formative years I dated my share of submariners), but the government spends like a drunken sailor. And they do it because they don't see the expenditures as their money but instead as other people's money. When you throw around million and billion and even trillion, you can't actually envision what that means.

The members of Congress constantly lie to the public regarding spending bills. They want to raise spending by 20% next year but the one group talks the other group down to 10% and both sides report that they reduced spending which is an outright lie but the gullible people watching CNN and the nightly news believe the gaslighting. This is a bipartisan lie.

If you've ever run a business or worked for one in a management position, you understand zero-based budgeting. EVERY expense you have starts from 0. You don't start from last year's numbers and add 3% for inflation. You even have to justify spending as much as you did last year. Granted, this is more done in the ideal than in practice but if your rent is too high, you figure out how much it would cost to move and how much time it would take to recoup the moving expense. If your heating bill is too high, you figure out if you can solve the problem with capital upgrades to windows and insulation for example.

So far I have not said anything that should be construed as even the slightest bit political. That comes if the conversation turns to WHAT the government decides to spend my money on.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Glib, but not really useful.

They intentionally make it over complicated for a reason, can you guess the reason?

 

[Thales750]

Instead of raising taxes, how about reducing federal spending. As @Mike Krailo noted, this is a loaded question, Democrats want to tax more so that they can spend more. Moreover, our tax policies are simply a transference of wealth. Essentially "steal" from the "rich" to give "stolen" money to the "poor".

Alternatively, instead of having an income based tax rate, how about having a value added tax.

So how would that work, with the entirety of the wealth of the world in the hands of a few people?
How would the People benefit?

There is a long way from 20th-century socialism to taking us back to where the vast majority of the wealth was owned by the Crown. It was only after the Industrial Revolution that personal productivity would raise the standard of living for everyday people. That happened even in Communist Russia and Socialist Eastern Europe. It happened better in capitalist countries, to be sure. It was not solely a function of capitalism. Capitalism has existed in human society since the very beginning, and the middle class came into existence from industrial advancement.

 

[Thales750]

Alternatively, instead of having an income based tax rate, how about having a value added tax.

How would that work?

 

[Thales750]

No we should not
I personally want less taxes which are simpler...

So I would go for lower income taxes at flat rates..

I would however max out capital gains tax on land and buildings UNLESS you actually build.. BUT this would be for everyone not just the wealthy.
I would have low capital gains on share ownership as well.. I have no problem with encouraging capital allocation liquidity.

I think there's good evidence that passive investment in land and property overflates housing which is counter productive especially for people getting started.

Earn money earn lots of money and keep that money but don't monopolise land and property with it..
Fine by me if you want max out VAT on luxuries we know from alcohol that people will still spend money on luxuries even with very high goods taxes.

I haven't figured out my position on inheritance tax yet.

You have obviously thought this out.