Millionaires Go Missing | Hacker News Reader

Millionaires Go Missing

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9 pointsgibsonf18 comments

In my opinion, it shows the absurdity of tax competition among states, not of tax hikes themselves.

Totally undermines his own point with this quote: "No doubt the majority of that loss in millionaire filings results from the recession".

I'm laughing at the thought of "millionaires" that went to all the trouble of moving to another state only to find that they weren't worth that much anymore and the cost of relocating outweighed the unexpectedly low tax benefits.

What applies to states does not necessarily apply to countries. It's easy to re-incorporate in another state; there are a number of small businesses that have nothing to do with Delaware other than being incorporated there for the benefits (tax and otherwise) involved. Relocating to another country is orders of magnitude harder.

Where are these pissed-off millionaires going to go? France? Sweden?

If you use a country's infrastructure, defense, and social services (which prevent the poor from rising up and killing you) you ought to pay for them.

I know I didn't grow up in the US, but horrible, horrible socialist Europe. As a result of this I'm obviously retarded and I can't possibly imagine paying a tax as measly low as 10% no matter what income I would have. How on earth would you be able to fund anything in society if people don't pay their freaking taxes?

Right now I'm making somewhat less than $100k, which I consider absolutely decent, and I'm very much fine with paying 40% taxes. How about that?

Anyway. I fail to see how this newsitem in particular relates to hacker news. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Many memebers are devotees of Ayn Rand writings, in one of which the rich go hiding underground after the government goes after them and then society crumbles (because, you see, the rich are the pinnacle of humanity). They are thus, trying to draw parallels between that highly fictitious wold and ours. Of course, this isn't the case at all, since if was the federal tax and not state tax that was raised the rich would just stay put and pay up.

I believe the US system has Federal taxes as well as state taxes. So the top tax-rate is much higher than 10% - but that 10% is all the state gets out of it

Read the article. It is talking about the state tax in Maryland, which is on top of federal income taxes.

I did reread the article, but not knowing Maryland and not knowing the US tax system I can't say how much of a increase this really was.

All the article says is "raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%". It says nothing about what it was so I'm kinda short on data.

Anyway: If you have a million dollar income, the loss of 6.25% of that would be 100% insignificant to your experienced wealth. Because seriously, you are making a million dollars.

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