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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

This is a very common argument, but aren't the rich already doing as much as possible to avoid the 39.6% rate?

Nope, taxpayers do as much as is efficient. If a tax lawyer says "I can save you $50k in taxes by setting up a new corporate structure, but it will cost $25k to set up and another $10k per year to maintain", then the taxpayer probably won't do it.

But if rates go up, then it turns into saving $100k, but with the same costs of implementation and upkeep. Basically, as rates go up, it makes sense to do more tax planning.

Sure, but we're talking about a $10M bracket. They're already at enough savings that it's worth spending $1M on tax avoidance even with a 39.6% rate...

Yes, Defined Benefit Pension Plans, 401K profit sharing, etc. There are an enormous amount of vehicles to use to legally lower your effective tax rate for wealthy individuals - especially small business owners.

This is my complaint too. People rant about the rich “paying their fair share”, but the problem here isn’t the tax rate applied to the rich, it’s that they don’t pay anywhere near it.

> People rant about the rich “paying their fair share”, but the problem here isn’t the tax rate applied to the rich, it’s that they don’t pay anywhere near it.

Yes, but the rich nonetheless pay the lion's share of income taxes:

The share of income earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers rose to 20.6 percent in 2014. Their share of federal individual income taxes also rose, to 39.5 percent.

from https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

And they receive the lion's share of benefits from getting privileged access to legislators, better policing, lighter sentencing in the rare case they are charged with an infraction. The poor basically get scraps, no legislative voice, higher risk of death by police, higher rate of incarceration, and basically all the worst parts of America. The rich are doing just fine, seeing as we're effectively in the second gilded age.

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