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Comment by MichaelCollins | Hacker News Reader

> It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

Like tax brackets? Treating big things exactly the same as small things seems ideological, not rational.

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Very different structurally. Tax brackets almost always apply _marginally_. The higher tax bracket only applies to income made above the higher bracket level.

Behavior that applies marginally avoids most "discontinuity" and distortions in incentives that come along with them. For example, people whose income increases from $99,999 to $100,001 are only incentivized by a 100,000 bracket to hide the marginal $2, rather than suddenly needing to hide all of their income.

EU regulations that apply to companies above a certain size are not like this. Once you pass a certain level, it applies to all the business below the level. That already has a distorting incentive on growth and incentivizes companies to stay small. Maybe that's something you want in this case, but it's almost always an unintended consequence.

There are other taxes that don’t function that way though. Like capital gains and stamp duty. Those taxes do frequently get gamed.

And capital gains taxes in particular massively distort incentives. But in that case it's intentional

US long term capital gains do work that way: they have marginal brackets just like regular income taxes. (Your starting bracket is calculated based on your regular income, rather than from 0 the way regular income tax brackets work, but otherwise they work the same.)

And short term cap gains are just regular income.

I assumed the discontinuity the commenter was referring to here is the >=1 year cutoff for long term capital gains. After one year, all of the gains from the previous year are instantly converted to a lower tax bracket. You're not required to reassess the cost basis at the 1 year mark or anything like that, so there's a huge (intentional) incentive to hold capital for over 1 year.

The US isn’t in the EU though ;)

I can’t speak for all member states but I do know some have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a percentage of the total amount. So some investment firms will game your portfolio to bring you in just enough to fly under that threshold.

The U.K., while not technically an EU member any more (and I’m still bitter about that), also operates this way.

Stamp duty is a U.K. tax placed on purchases of property. It’s free for properties under a threshold but the moment you go over it you have to pay a percentage of the total price of your house. Stamp duty does have incremental percentages but it isn’t calculated like income tax. Thus you’ll often see a lot of properties for slightly under each increment and then a jump in prices after. Some sellers even go as far as to put the house on for £x (under that threshold) but charge extra for additional purchases outside of the property (like a gazebo, hot tub, etc). I’ve even seen some buyers/sellers ask for private bank transfers for the additional extra. Which is outright fraud. But it does still happen.

> I can’t speak for all member states but I do know some have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a percentage of the total amount

So, exactly the same thing with a bottom bracket marginal rate of 0%?

No. Income tax you only pay the percentage of the bracket you’re in. So (made up numbers here) if you earn 100k and the bracket changes every 40k then the first 40k will be taxed at the first bracket. The second 40k at the second bracket, and the remaining 20k at the third bracket. This means there’s no incentive to game income tax because if you narrowly slide into the next bracket then you only pay the higher tax rate for that margin you’ve gone over.

Whereas the capital gains and stamp duty go from (again made up numbers) 0% on 15k to 15% on anything above 15k. So if you had 15k you get taxed nothing. But if you get 15,001 then you pay 15% on ~15k (just by gaining an extra £1) rather than 15% on £1 (like how income tax works). Thus that extra £1 actually ends up costing you _a lot_ more in tax than it’s face value. And thus why people game such taxes to slide under the threshold in ways that doesn’t make sense with income tax.

This was true, but UK stamp duty was reformed in 2014 to use marginal bands like income tax.

There have been exceptions to that reform though. For example the “stamp duty holiday” incentive ~two years ago removed marginal bands for the lower thresholds during its run. Which created a great deal of chaos for the housing market.

I wonder if there's any way these sorts of regulations could be applied marginally.

Perhaps if we formalized legal code as code, we could apply automatic differentiation (just kidding... I think)

Continuous laws do seem more fair in general. But it seems more important (to me, at least) that this sort of fairness is applied to individuals. For companies... they aren't people, we don't need to worry about making their lives confusing or miserable. They have legal departments to sort this sort of stuff out, they'll respond rationally to incentives, it is just a business decision.

They aren't people, but every additional thing they have to contend with affects only people. The abstract company is just a common understanding of what people are doing and what group of people they are dealing with when they buy a product.

Make the fine 10% of the marginal revenue?

> Maybe that's something you want in this case

I think it is.

But keep in mind that this is at least partially contributing to the status quo, where there are very few large European tech companies and even fewer young ones.

The amount of market power Apple has left even after such extensive regulation still far surpasses what a small company can hope to get by building even the most restricted walled garden.

So, if there were any medium companies just below the regulation threshold, the discontinuity argument would make sense. But there isn't, and there won't be, precisely because of anti-competitive behavior of the giants, they can sustain walled gardens precisely because they are giants.

This is the core of the issue.

I have no recourse against Big Tech scamming me. They are an oligopoly sharing the same anti-consumer practices.

But if I regularly buy something from a friend, maybe I'm a 10th of their customer base.

This doesn't work online, and is the opposite of how fraud works in practice though. Larger sellers have a reputation that they care about and invest in. Small sellers with 10 sales don't care at all, they will make 10 good sales and steal from the 11th for a 10% profit.

Created an account to say: citation needed.

Giants can afford to skimp on any single customer relationship. Go read Amazon reviews, etc...

The one-person show with only continental shipping taking PayPal payments for their hobby business absolutely cannot afford to screw over 10% of their customer base. PayPal (or any other provider) has no patience, and anecdotally will always side with the customer.

And sure, citation needed, I know :)

Have you used Amazon lately? They not only don't care, they push garbage that is obviously fake in their advertised/recommend blocks. Go search for an SD card on Amazon, and they will recommend a 5000 terabyte SD card that costs $9. I've switched to Best Buy because in this weird dystopian future they are more worthy of my business than Amazon now and I'm not doing business with garbage companies any more.

My personal experience with Amazon in particular has been the opposite of yours.

Amazon has completely refunded every defective or damaged products I have ever received. I've done two returns of $100+ items in the past month, in one case the seller disagreed with me and Amazon took my side. In total I've probably had 30 refunds over the past 10 years of which at least 5 were Amazon intervening to prevent the seller from screwing me.

Why do you buy so many defective or damaged products?

I cannot remember the last time I had to return something. I rarely buy from Amazon though, and choose quality products from reputable sources, not the cheapest offer.

Or maybe I'm just lucky.

I buy multiple things online every week, probably 200 per year on average. I also buy a lot of cheap electronics.

Amazon loves you.

I bought studio monitor speakers from Amazon. I received 1. Sent it back. Amazon refused to refund me. I had to point out over and over that from the weight of my package they can easily tell they did not ship me two speakers, only one. Nope. Months later I got an Amazon credit.

Just recently Amazon allowed me to buy a kindle book for my specific kindle device, which turned out to not be supported. But they still allowed me to purchase and deliver it to this kindle. Only once I went to the device to sync it did I learn that it was incompatible. I was not allowed a refund.

Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.

Sometimes it’s a fun mind experiment:

YES, like tax brackets. Everyone should pay 30k$ per year to the government, no matter how rich or poor, for the services they get, and it would be the literal individual fair share.

The percentage-based taxes are already an unfair distribution of cost for the rich, and the progressive taxes amplify it even more. After all, who costs more at school, a Jeff Bezos, or an unruly one?

Good comment, but this will get killed by libs. However you are too high with 30k. I think something like 3k should be plenty to finance our government, and affordable for all. If the rich want a more expensive program that the poor cannot afford then they gotta find another way to finance it, rather than from taxes. Our government is supposed to represent all of its people, not give preferential treatment to the rich, the poor, blacks or whites, retirees or students, renters or landlords etc. Its none of its business.

However who benefits more? Who relies more on street infrastructure for revenue? The CEO of a car company, or a random worker?

The government should protect our constitutional rights, provide security from other nations and represent all of us abroad. It shouldn’t build roads, (beachfront) housing, statues or plant trees. Thats up to the people that will benefit from it, whether that be a company, a worker or a town agreeing to do so.

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