Tax discrimination

Yes.(*)​

You would not be wrong, but the government doesn't tax currency. It taxes income.​

 

Good question. Not sure there is an easy answer (or at least that I have an easy one). But just and fair means equitable, it means treating folks equally. I suppose one should extend that to mean equally situated folks equally.

In serving people at a lunch counter, the fact that one is black and another is white really makes no difference to the business deal. So it would only be fair to treat them equally, neither should be charged more than the other. If one asked to be given steak and another asked to be given a sandwich, well that difference would be relevant to the transaction. Making a distinction between them in charging the man who was given steak would also be fair.

I guess I could offer one criteria that might be useful. When the difference is in what folks ask of you, it's reasonable to respond to them differently. When the difference is only in who they are... it seems less reasonable.

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How about if we define discrimination based on socialism unjust and discrimination based on capitalism just in our capital based system of markets and republican form of government?

 

That won't tell you how much income tax the rich pay, as I already explained.

Again, that won't tell you how much income tax the rich pay.

How?

That still won't tell you how much income tax the rich pay.

 

Over the years Warren Buffet has bounced between being the richest to the 3rd richest person in the U.S., while his salary has consistently been $100,000 per year. Most medical doctors make more income than Warren Buffet. So if your measure is wealth, then Warren Buffet is at the top, but if your measure is income, Warren buffet is a looong way down that list. How is that possible? Well, you own a corporation which owns other corporations which do not pay dividends, but rather uses the profits to buy more assets. In that way your wealth can grow at a phenomenal rate, while income tax liabilities are few and far between.

A year or two ago Roy posted a story about man he met on an airplane. The gist of the story was that the man owned a corporation and was traveling the world. The man never paid any income taxes because as an employee of the corporation, he earned very little money. The corporation the man controlled also didn’t pay any income tax, because the corporation had the huge expense of paying for this employee to travel all across the world on “business trips”.

Hopefully you can begin to visualize how easy it is to amass (or enjoy) wealth while at the same time having very little income tax liability. Wealth and income are not the same thing.

 

Yes, another little milestone on my voyage from feudal libertarianism to economic consciousness... from the days when flying "business class" wasn't so freakin' expensive.

 

The thread is about tax "discrimination" against the rich.

Yes -- and good luck finding those data.

A whole different set of data, which are definitely NOT available, if anyone is even permitted to collect them.

 

From my perspective, such graphs may not be as useful since our elected representatives are so fond of playing shell games with Statism, instead of actually solving our social dilemmas in modern times.

How big is the shell game book known as our tax code in modern times?

 

Correctt. As Roy pointed out, we tax the upper income working folks as if they were as wealthy as the Rockefellers. This is a gross injustice perpetrated upon us by the wealthy, with the assistance of their whores in Washington.

The funny thing is, many supposed "small government folks" don't mind allowing the wealthy to have a large share of their income taxed at a different rate because they receive it as gains. Further, they will hide behind some lame " the good of society" excuse, they same type of crap they decry "liberals" for.

What most folks fail to understand is that if individuals were to be taxed according to an actual measure of wealth, we could all pay a much lower uniform rate. The average working person would keep much more of what he earns in his pocket. That capital would be available for real investment into the economy, and the mega wealthy would find their monopoly on wealth broken.

Our convoluted progressive income tax achieves the opposite.
In the name of helping the little guy, the wealthy corporatists in washington have convinced us to shoot ourselves in the foot. "Libs" and "cons" are equally duped.

 

Yes, they usually invoke absurd nonsense like "if we don't rig the economy to make the rich richer, no one will have the money to invest in growing the economy," ignoring the fact that giving the rich trillions for doing nothing HASN'T resulted in them investing in growing the economy. They also somehow can't understand that the only reason working people don't invest in growing the economy is that they don't have any money: their rightful earnings have been stolen by income tax and given to the rich.

Another outrageous canard invoked by the right is "double taxation," a concept that apparently only applies to the property taxes, estate taxes, and corporate income tax that fall on the rich, not to the tax on the earned incomes of ordinary working people, which are taxed when earned, and then taxed again when spent (excise tax, tariffs, sales tax, etc.), then taxed again as the earnings of the working people who are paid to produce what the money was spent on, and so on, ad infinitum.

Bingo. It's the same principle as taxing land: tax it, and its owners will either put it to productive use or sell it to someone who will, in order to avoid losing money to the tax. If we taxed accumulated wealth, its owners would either put it to productive enough use to pay the tax or lose money. As it is:

"To turn $100 into $200 is work. To turn $100 million into $200 million is inevitable." -- Canadian billionaire Samuel Bronfman

Yep. Having spent some time in political trenches, I have learned that on both left and right, the guys at the top despise most of their followers as nothing but foolish, ignorant sheep to be sheared, and have no appetite for actual solutions that would challenge the rule of the privileged, even solutions that are consistent with their putative principles. Hope springs eternal, so I had hopes when Obama was elected. Silly me. His quick appointments of Summers, Paulson and Geithner to the top economic jobs told the whole story: he is just another bought and paid for servant of Wall Street thieves and the privileged elite, nothing more.

 

I don't understand why a uniform rate is a desirable goal. Taxing Bill more than Joe for the same rights and privileges is unfair. Whether that tax is uniform according to personal wealth, skin pigmentation, or height doesn't make it any more fair.

We do need to ask for more from those who can provide more. I believe this is because we have voted our selves so many expensive entitlements that it's not possible to fairly tax Americans and still pay for the American lifestyle. But I think it's dishonest to suggest we're being fair about it by using either personal wealth or personal income as a tax basis.

There is no monopoly on wealth. Anyone who provide anything useful to his neighbor has wealth.​

 

are you proposing a flat fee, x dollars per individual ?

We do need to ask for more from those who can provide more. I believe this is because we have voted our selves so many expensive entitlements that it's not possible to fairly tax Americans and still pay for the American lifestyle. But I think it's dishonest to suggest we're being fair about it by using either personal wealth or personal income as a tax basis.[/quote]

I am unclear of what you are proposing. Can you clarify your position ?​

 

it really doesn't matter if Romney or Obama wins, either way they win.

Either way they are going to tax the crap out of the upper income workers. The rich will be laughing.

 

My position is a flat fee or metered services would be fair. The federal government is currently spending more than $12,000 per person annually for the rights and privileges we receive equally. Most families can't pay that. Therefore asking those who can afford to pick up the slack to do so is currently a necessity, but not fair.​

 

what are you proposing "to pick up the slack" ?

 

I'm not. Our current system, which places the burden on those with higher income seems unavoidably necessary in the short term. Your suggestion of shifting it to those with greater wealth, seems also unfair but no less a reasonable compromise if possible. Although I think it would require some annual census of people's individual wealth and that might be too difficult or costly to implement.

In the long term, I think the only proposal that would take us to a fair end is if our federal government reduced spending to a level where at least the majority of families could afford to pay the per capita federal cost of the lifestyle we enjoy.​

 

Yes...There is a simple example...Collect $1Million from 1 'rich' person or collect $1.00 (dollar) from 300 million folks. That is, in essence, our tax system. The majority of folks pay the majority of taxes. There is no reason to exact tax penalties on the rich because you can't tax them enough to make up the difference. All you really do (by draconian taxation of the 'rich') is to restrict tax revenue and thwart economic development as any truly 'rich' person can afford tax shelters to 'couch' their money.

 

draconian taxation of the high income worker exists currently, and needs to be corrected.

 

Yes they don't typically have the ability to legally evade draconian taxation like Obama's friends (GE Exec. Jeffery Immelt, Warren Buffett, (whose 'Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad will be transporting all that oil because his buddy Obama vetoed the pipeline).

No THEIR money is well sheltered. The 'rich' (as Obama defines them) are just regular folks trying to make a living.

 

I suppose if you consider that lowest proporational federal taxes in 60 years to be draconian.

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