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Comment by g42gregory | Hacker News Reader

I don't think wealthy are paying much taxes, percentage-wise (significant in dollar value though). There are simply too many tax minimization instruments that they have at their disposal. It's the middle class that is carrying the brunt of taxation. So when they say "tax the rich", what they really mean is "tax the middle class and small business owners". Eventually, you would run out of "other people's money" and you will have a society of super-rich and super-poor. I suspect it won't be a good place to live in.

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I was under the impressions that the "tax the rich" mentality actually aims to close these loopholes for the super-rich. The idea is (I think) that increasing taxes on the literal top 1% or 0.1% just a little is much more effective than increasing them across the board.

What we the little folk mean for "tax the rich" is indeed "tax the mega rich". What gets implemented for "tax the rich" is a different story, because lobby can more than often sway implementations.

i mean the low hanging fruit of "close these loopholes" would be reinstatement of a progressive income tax.

The ultra-rich certainly have tax minimisation schemes in place, but by saying that middle-class bears the brunt of taxation, I suspect you're falling victim to the fallacy that rich people don't think of themselves as rich[1]. In the UK at least, the tax burden is fairly progressive:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

The top 1% of earners pay roughly 30% of all income tax. The top 10% pay roughly 50% of all income tax. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% pay roughly 10% of income tax.

That leaves to 50-90th percentile, who you might call "middle class" (although it's debatable whether someone in the 80-90 range is truly middle class) who pay approximately 30% of all income tax. So the whole middle class only pays as much tax in total as the 90-99 range, although their total of pre-tax income is double.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/most-millionaires-dont-think...

While this may all be true, a more sobering perspective comes from considering the impact on the individuals paying the taxes:

"the poorest fifth of people paid 22.9% on indirect taxes such as Value Added Tax (VAT) compared with 9.1% for the richest fifth" [0].

"As it stands, there is set to be both an Income Tax rise and Income Tax cut in 2024-25, and a further tax rise in 2025-26, with a net transfer from lower- to higher-income individuals" [1].

To return to parent comment's point, trickle-down economics have demonstrably failed. Taxes are avoided by the rich while punishing the poor - surely absolutely not what should be happening.

[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

[1] https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/happy-new-...

There aren't very many historical examples of societies with high income tax, mostly because being able to effectively collect national income tax is a fairly new invention after all.

But the examples we do have include USA in the 1950s (top tax bracket 91%) and Sweden in the 1970s (top tax bracket 87%). Those are some of the most successful societies ever, especially in comparison to their peers at the time. Even the extreme right in these countries sees those eras as national high points.

I don't think there's evidence that taxation on its own creates stratified societies of super-rich and super-poor. For example, the problems of Brazil are largely unrelated to the tax rate.

That's exactly how Canada is like. Monopolies dominate the industries and middle class are dying

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