The top 3% of income earners pay 51% of all income taxes.[1] You think that's too little? What should that number be?
[1]http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...
Seems like we can work backwards to determine that?
are YOU prepared to pay let's say an 80% income tax and a 25% sales tax for example ?
Food too expensive? Robotics farming. More energy needed? Scale up solar, wind, and utility scale battery storage installations. Moar cheap transportation? Scale up bicycle and electric self-driving car manufacturing.
It _can_ be done. We simply need the will to do so. Work backwards, first principles style. We have lots of atoms and electrons, lets organize them efficiently for everyone's benefit.
On the monetary side of things - it's very easy to 'proclaim' that you're willing to sacrifice your standard of living for the benefit of the others. When it comes to concrete implementations however, things typically don't work that way, ppl tend to bust their asses when there's concrete material compensation involved, otherwise - not so much. And if you take any material incentive to work away by providing free money you get multi-generation welfare families which we have in abundance as is. One can argue that these folks would be better off without the free money killing their will to work - to 'organize atoms and electrons' for ANYONE's benefit, yours included.
As an admittedly extreme example, if the population consisted of 100 people who make 2$ and pay 1$, and one guy who makes $1000 and pays $100, he's responsible for half the tax income but probably still isn't paying his fair share since he's only paying 10% instead of 50%.
So income taxes represent almost 3x the income stream that payroll taxes do. So I'd say not paying income taxes is a pretty big break in my book.
[1]http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-source...
And that's not even remotely the amount of taxes on businesses that raise the price of goods secretly to compensate the taxes hidden.
And also, even illegal immigrants pay these taxes. They aren't even exempt. And many use fraudulent SSNs, so taxes are taken an applied to those SS accounts, but the illegals never use them. Yet more money for the coffers.
But some percentage isn't paying any of one specific tax.
Whatever.
So the only response to that 'fair share' argument is still only "take more from those that have/work and give to those that don't/can't".
I mean fine, but let's call it what it is.
The lottery is a tax on hope
So yes! I do think its too little, especially in the top 1%. I think some moderately more progressive tax rates would be an improvement.
One of the things that appeals to me about UBI is that it is a dramatic simplification of welfare bureaucracy. I would love to see something similar to the way we calculate taxes. Simplifying and closing tax holes would help extract more taxes from people who should be paying more while not punishing wage earners who have most of their taxes preempted out of their paycheck.
And I think Mitt Romney should pay a higher rate than me. http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/21/pf/taxes/romney-tax-return/
The problem is that we treat capital gains differently than we treat income. Most of the top 3% work and pay income taxes, but the top .1% don't really pay income tax.
"The reason Romney's rate is so low -- despite having one of the highest incomes in the country -- is because his income was derived almost entirely from capital gains and dividends from his extensive portfolio of investments. And that form of investment income is typically taxed at just 15%, well below the 35% top tax rate for high earners."
As mention before on HN, yes rates were higher a while ago, but so were deductions. Nobody actually paid a 90% marginal rate.
I don't think corporate taxes work, what's needed is systems and taxes in place to encourage keeping money more local, as well as diversifying or paying out dividends, which would in turn be taxed (assuming adjustments in capital gains). I'd just assume get rid of corporate taxes with the above adjustments and also get rid of corporate personhood and significant campaign reform.
Seriously, the whole "but rich people pay all the taxes, and poor people pay no taxes..." myth needs to die a horrible death.
But I live in a state which just lowered the income tax. And increased every other tax, as well as created a variety of taxes on services that were previously untaxed. And they then tell us our taxes have gone down. But somehow, the vast majority of people seem to be have less personal profit than the year before (assuming all income and costs sans taxes remain the same).
Think of it this way: "The top 10% (in my country) pay 74% of all taxes," really translates to "This group makes 90% of all income and but only pays 74% of taxes."
That means that those who make 10% of the total income (again, in my country) pay 26% of taxes. It's not the top that are hurting because they're paying tax in excess of their means, they're getting off lightly.