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Comment by jensen123 | Hacker News Reader

I have an old book here - The International Man by Doug Casey, which was published in 1978. It lists the tax rates for several countries. For example, the income tax went up to 75% in Japan, 71% in the Netherlands, 70% in Norway, 55% in Singapore, 80% in Sweden, 83% in the UK, 70% in the US and 56% in West-Germany.

I'm wondering if maybe there might be a correlation between unreasonably high taxes and tax havens? If the tax rate is reasonable, say 20-30%, then I probably won't bother trying to evade taxes myself and I won't have much sympathy with others doing it (greedy assholes!). However, if the tax rate is like 70-80%, then yeah, putting some money in a tax haven becomes tempting and I will have much sympathy with other tax dodgers.

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The US tax rates are vastly lower than that, and we still have enormous amounts of tax evasion (legal and illegal). Looking at the language from much of the US's rich, and they're basically stating that any tax is too much, so I'm not sure there's a rate you could charge that will be sufficiently low to encourage civic responsibility from those who think they should not pay any taxes for anything.

Same with rent and the poor, they always complain. Does this mean that any rent control mechanism is unnecessary?

The US tax rate is hardly lower… if you live in San Francisco and are in the top bracket, you pay 50%+ tax rate if you don't make an effort to minimize (aka dodge) your exposure.

And so many of those benefit from getting access to capital gains instead if they get stock which many who are in the top bracket do.

Being in the 50% tax bracket does not mean paying 50% of your income in taxes.

The people engaging in significant tax avoidance aren't the ones who make $1 more than the threshold for the highest tax bracket, they're the people (and corporations) who make many millions or billions of dollars and would otherwise have an effective tax rate that has converged to the highest marginal rate.

In california it often does.

Could you cite a source on that? I'm not aware of any income tax bracket over 39.6%

Don't forget state income tax. In California this tops out around 12% or so. State + federal adds up to over 50% total.

In what universe is 50% not less than 70%? In what universe in America is anyone being taxed at 70% right now?

Even more so, an the relative difference of |70% - 50%| / |%50| = 40% is gigantic. A very misleading statement.

You're probably counting the federal tax, don't forget to add the state tax as well

At a certain point of earning lawyers and accountants (and shell companies) are cheaper, earnings are not direct and it's hard to make people pay their fair share (without making it difficult for smaller firms, etc)

I think it also has to do with what you're getting in return. Brazil was recently elected one of the counties where you get the least return from your taxes. Security is zero, roads are full of holes, people die in line in the public health care system. I heard a gas station owner tired of being robbed describing government as a partner that gets 35% in advance and gives nothing in return. That is how I feel - you buy a beer, but gov. drinks half the cup. You buy a sweater, but government takes a sleeve. You buy an apple, gov takes a bite. And what you get in return? Nothing. I think leaving people to decide what to do with their own money is fundamentally better than leaving other people in charge of what to do with other people's money.

what makes 20-30% reasonable? Just don't say "because it feels right".

I think people don't like how half (or more than half) of their "hard earned" income goes to the government. 20-30% seems more reasonable, because you get to keep most of what you earn.

Think of marginal rates (because the top rates only apply at the higher salary ranges)

Would you like to get a $100 pay raise and get only an effective $20 pay raise? Would you bother working more for that?

People will always have a sense of fairness. And we're not talking about the very rich there (which usually pay a smaller effective rate), we're talking about people with high earnings, but usually not millionaires.

At the hundreds of millions and higher club it's all a form of dick measuring contest anyway, so yes... Those people would do what they do even if the tax rate were 99%.

I totally admit I said 20-30% because that felt right to me. I guess I ought to sit down and look at the stuff governments provide that I appreciate (such as basic police protection and infrastructure) and how much that costs. And I should probably look at all the bad things governments do (unneccesary wars, intrusive nanny state rules etc.) and how much damage that causes.

Of course, there are other things that affect whether a tax rate seems reasonable, too. For example, in a country where the difference between rich and poor is great, it might make sense to tax the rich more than in a country where the difference is small.

Without any sort of metric which defines what a successful tax policy means then reasonable probably means, "is sufficient to pay for the services the people demand."

Why is a percentage reasonable? Why not a fixed tax? Why have tax brackets at all as opposed to a smooth curve? Why should taxes scale proportional to income and not amount of services consumed or potentially thousands of other variables? Why should a pacifist pay for the military? Why should a pedestrian pay for the roads? Is it fair to use taxes to manipulate the incentives of consumers to they consume more or less of specific products (like corn and tobacco respectively)? Is is ethical to use taxes (or lack thereof) to steal businesses away from other states or countries? Should people who work in certain industries be taxed more or less? How about different tax rates based on age, race, sex, or gender as there's probably data to support different risk factors for different segments of the population. Should people who have been on welfare be taxed more to compensate? Should the tax rate be negative for certain income levels?

I have absolutely no doubt that you can answer all these questions relative to your own personal definition of reasonableness but there's no chance in hell any sufficiently large group will agree on any or all of these.

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