I think this is unsurpring given that the crypto userbase seems to consist mostly of speculators and criminals.
If you search around for crypto tax software, you'll find there's actual demand from people that want to pay taxes on their crypto.
I think that’s more of a “need to” thing rather than “want to”, yes even for the people that aren’t using crypto for criminal activity.
Let's be real here. With compounding, total taxation takes away 90% of income. If that's not theft, I don't know what is. There would be an appropriate level of taxation that would be fair, perhaps 10%.
* I think that the 4% number is dubious but it's not material to the question.
So you can't argue that lack of savings under the current system implies no savings under a low-tax system. It is pretty reasonable to suggest that a big contributing factor to the lack of savings is precisely what the tax system does to savers.
That does not compute.
Perhaps you could explain that.
It says the answer is a 90% loss (not 99% or higher), which still is quite bad. Again, this is pending me doing the calculations myself.
Regarding taxes, a total tax burden of 50% was used to account for all taxes (income, sales, property, etc.)
Even this calculation by GPT doesn't take into account the "investment gain" taxes one would have to pay at the end, which would bring the loss percentage above 90.
If someone is taxed and doesn't or can't save, or their retirement gets screwed up, or they make enough to get taxed but not enough to invest significantly, or finds themselves in any of a myriad of screwy situations, then they only make 5-7% by diligently saving up the same amount that the first two would have been investing year over year.
95% of their potential income is lost by not investing reasonably. If someone were magically able to not pay taxes, they gain 150% of the good-retirement investment and taxes scenario.
Given the constant nickel and diming, the gotchas, the shuffling of money back and forth, and the outsized impact on investment, I completely agree that a flat 10% absolute level of taxation, not a red cent over, would be reasonable. It's also super important to invest, and to keep dropping money into your investments over time that you never touch, just use a diverse and sensible fund, and don't pull it out until you retire.
Not only is it theft of the future, it's wasted and misspent in awful ways. Sure am glad all our representatives are getting so wealthy, though. Wonderful people, that lot.
It might be too complicated to say. Someone who doesn't pay income tax, maybe. Depending on assumptions.
But I worked out at some point that >50% of my time spent working was being redirected towards the tax office - my income because it was taxed when I earned it (+ any stealthy payroll taxes), taxed again when it was spent and if it was invested in the middle it got taxed a third time for fake "capital gains" from money creation.
When you look at government spending (typically 40-50% of GDP in the West) and consider that most of that is probably malinvestment (by lack-of-alternatives-to-tax they're taking from the most economically productive members of society) you've probably lost more than half your wealth vs a no tax society. There is friction everywhere.