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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

> everyone (yes, I know, there are exceptions, that's not the point) pays their share into health insurance

Everyone pays their fair share based on income from working, but not from their wealth, assets, dividends, interest, etc in many places.

If your "income" comes from those sources, you aren't paying your fair share compared to people who must work to eat.

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This is false. Pretty much all personal income is taxed, and definitively dividends. While it might be beneficial for the society to tax assets, any personal income from those assets are taxed in most cases. There are ways to avoid it to a certain extend but if you want a 5 million euros from one of your companies you would pay tax on that. If you want a boat you could set up HireMyBoat Inc and then avoid paying taxes on that 5 mill to pay a boat but still use the boat for vacations (this might be illegal but very rarely enforced).

I didn't say personal income wasn't taxed, and I also put "income" in quotes because capital gains aren't taxed as income, and there are various schemes one can engage in to shield value from, or reduce, taxes like income tax.

Exactly. Which is why a lot of Europe's wealth is inherited and has policies in place to protect that wealth and roll it over across generations (nearly) tax free, so most of the Government taxes are gathered on the backs of the working class, not the asset owning class, making it a serfdom with extra steps.

Ironically, US has way tougher inheritance taxes than most of EU.

Also Europe has so many literal monarchy and other royal descents that still owns huge capital, banks and so on. GL with auditing royal families, so much hidden information there.

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