Hacker News Reader

Comment by bronco21016 | Hacker News Reader

I find it hard to believe that any of the professionals you list make $10 million in taxable income. There are a few outliers but to act like all lawyers and doctors would be poor from a 70% rate over $10 million is just wrong.

Your sentiment that the truly rich make their money outside of a typical paycheck is correct though. It’s a balancing act of how do we tax people who have accumulated so much wealth in capital vs taxing capital so much that people don’t invest in it.

I don’t pretend to have the answer there but spreading disinformation that professional working people would be hurt by a 70% rate on every $1 over $10 million is pretty irresponsible.

View on HN

Can anyone recommend a good resource that talks about the trade offs between raising capital gains tax vs income tax? If the goal is wealth redistribution, it seems to me like a no brainer that capital gains is the more effective route.

Please, stop using talking points like "disinformation". So sick of it. The point is that if you create a new tax bracket that is $10 million, there will be many new tax brackets between $10 million and the current top tax bracket of $500K. It is extremely naive to believe that creating such a high tax bracket will be a one off and it's extremely naive to believe creating such a high tax rate won't drag the lower ones a tad bit higher.

Just like lowering the highest tax bracket and tax rate lowered the tax brackets and tax rates below it. Creating a new highest tax bracket will do the opposite.

But then again, it's my opinion not "disinformation".

Why couldn't just a new tax bracket at 10mil be added? No need to stretch or modify any others.

Seriously. These are things that are defined. There is really nothing stopping us from saying "Ok. Up to 500k is unmodified. Here is the curve that will be created above that level".

When you say "This isn't going to do much but ..." in response to an article about a specific policy proposal, and don't say what you mean by "this", the common-sense interpretation is that you're referring to the policy proposal in the article, not some other policy you think is likely to be enacted as a result.

Nobody has mentioned anything about other brackets between the current upper end and $10 million.

To make statements that a 70% bracket above $10 million would negatively affect professions that are typically upper-middle class (not $10 mil/year) is misleading at a minimum.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com