"Tax the Rich"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxes is theft plain and simple.

The rich have money to spare and taxes doesn't affect them.

If things were FAIR, then anyone making less than 100K a year and owning less than 2 million dollars of real estate, would have to pay ZERO TAXES.

So much of this post is insane... But mainly, no, taxes are absolutely not theft. Think of them as a membership fee for being part of a society.

By this logic, everyone should pay for membership. But that's not how our tax regime works. It penalizes the most productive and successful in order to benefit those who contribute the least productivity, for no apparent reason. It also distorts the economy and markets through ever-changing government efforts to apply social engineering through a system of tax-related incentives and disincentives, causing people and businesses to engage in behaviors they otherwise would eschew.

A fair system would be a flat tax where everyone, regardless of income, pays the same rate. People with higher incomes pay more, lower incomes pay less, everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain. The inefficiencies inherent in our convoluted system of deductions, income brackets, credits, and exemptions could be instantly eliminated.

Notwithstanding your obviously incorrect assertions that high income earners are necessarily productive and low income earners do not contribute to society, paying your f—king taxes for the benefit of a country which has allowed you to be financially successful, (relatively) healthy, and (relatively) safe IS NOT A PENALTY!

I really wish we could round up all of you “self-made” producers and drop you off in Somalia. Let’s see how productive you are then.

People with higher incomes are, by definition, more productive. They wouldn't be more highly compensated otherwise. They make more money, spend more money, invest more money, and they pay more taxes. People with lower incomes do less of all those things. It's simple enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxes is theft plain and simple.

The rich have money to spare and taxes doesn't affect them.

If things were FAIR, then anyone making less than 100K a year and owning less than 2 million dollars of real estate, would have to pay ZERO TAXES.

So much of this post is insane... But mainly, no, taxes are absolutely not theft. Think of them as a membership fee for being part of a society.

By this logic, everyone should pay for membership. But that's not how our tax regime works. It penalizes the most productive and successful in order to benefit those who contribute the least productivity, for no apparent reason. It also distorts the economy and markets through ever-changing government efforts to apply social engineering through a system of tax-related incentives and disincentives, causing people and businesses to engage in behaviors they otherwise would eschew.

A fair system would be a flat tax where everyone, regardless of income, pays the same rate. People with higher incomes pay more, lower incomes pay less, everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain. The inefficiencies inherent in our convoluted system of deductions, income brackets, credits, and exemptions could be instantly eliminated.

"everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain."

That's exactly how you get tax brackets. 30% for people making more than 1M/yr does not materially impact the quality of life. But 30% on someone making 50k has a massive impact on the ability to do basic things in life.

You seem to be making a moral argument for progressive taxes but then asking for a regressive tax system. That doesn't work.

No argument here for progressive taxes. A flat tax is not that. It merely is simple, efficient, and fair. If the tax rate is set at 30%, then lower earning people should pay that just as much as people earning more. If 30% is too high for poorer people, pick a lower rate, for everyone. Nobody will complain about that.

https://kansaspolicy.org/four-reasons-for-a-flat-tax/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do well. I am not complaining and feel very fortunate to have two very good paying careers. But we just did our end of year tax analysis with our CPA and our effective tax rate when adding federal plus DC taxes is 45% (36% federal, 9% DC and DC is only "low" because a lot of our income is through a DC C-Corp which is taxes slightly lower at 8.5%).

45% of our income going to taxes. Nearly half of what we take home. And yes -- we are utilizing every single tax strategy under the sun available to us and work with a very good CPA.

So let's change the complaint from "tax the rich" to "tax the billionaires" because the regular rich are playing PLENTY in taxes already. Sigh.

+1

Always have said that---when you add in State taxes, many of us are paying 45%+ on the majority of our income. yes, the first 400K is taxed less, but if you are earning $1.2M, majority is being taxed at the 45%+. Add in medicare tax (almost 2%) and you approach 50%. yes we make a lot, but not in the billions range. It's all wages and interest/dividends (and some Cap gains). So no way to "hide" the income. We are paying plenty, it's the really wealthy who manage to avoid it, as well as corporations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I paid $8 M in federal estate taxes last year.

There are all kinds of trusts and other strategies to avoid this. Seems like it would have been worth it for your parents to have spent say $200k to set this up, considering based on the amount of tax paid the estate was probably like $50MM

It’s not as easy as it looks to avoid all taxes. It’s easy to go over the $14 million dollar lifetime gift exemption if you’re in the 1%. Even with 8 different trusts that are used for 8 different reasons it’s tough to avoid some estate tax. Unless you’re a billionaire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxes is theft plain and simple.

The rich have money to spare and taxes doesn't affect them.

If things were FAIR, then anyone making less than 100K a year and owning less than 2 million dollars of real estate, would have to pay ZERO TAXES.

So much of this post is insane... But mainly, no, taxes are absolutely not theft. Think of them as a membership fee for being part of a society.

By this logic, everyone should pay for membership. But that's not how our tax regime works. It penalizes the most productive and successful in order to benefit those who contribute the least productivity, for no apparent reason. It also distorts the economy and markets through ever-changing government efforts to apply social engineering through a system of tax-related incentives and disincentives, causing people and businesses to engage in behaviors they otherwise would eschew.

A fair system would be a flat tax where everyone, regardless of income, pays the same rate. People with higher incomes pay more, lower incomes pay less, everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain. The inefficiencies inherent in our convoluted system of deductions, income brackets, credits, and exemptions could be instantly eliminated.

Notwithstanding your obviously incorrect assertions that high income earners are necessarily productive and low income earners do not contribute to society, paying your f—king taxes for the benefit of a country which has allowed you to be financially successful, (relatively) healthy, and (relatively) safe IS NOT A PENALTY!

I really wish we could round up all of you “self-made” producers and drop you off in Somalia. Let’s see how productive you are then.

People with higher incomes are, by definition, more productive. They wouldn't be more highly compensated otherwise. They make more money, spend more money, invest more money, and they pay more taxes. People with lower incomes do less of all those things. It's simple enough.

Not simple at all. You forget the people who have very high incomes from unearned money. They don’t produce anything. And production does not correlate with income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do well. I am not complaining and feel very fortunate to have two very good paying careers. But we just did our end of year tax analysis with our CPA and our effective tax rate when adding federal plus DC taxes is 45% (36% federal, 9% DC and DC is only "low" because a lot of our income is through a DC C-Corp which is taxes slightly lower at 8.5%).

45% of our income going to taxes. Nearly half of what we take home. And yes -- we are utilizing every single tax strategy under the sun available to us and work with a very good CPA.

So let's change the complaint from "tax the rich" to "tax the billionaires" because the regular rich are playing PLENTY in taxes already. Sigh.

+1

Always have said that---when you add in State taxes, many of us are paying 45%+ on the majority of our income. yes, the first 400K is taxed less, but if you are earning $1.2M, majority is being taxed at the 45%+. Add in medicare tax (almost 2%) and you approach 50%. yes we make a lot, but not in the billions range. It's all wages and interest/dividends (and some Cap gains). So no way to "hide" the income. We are paying plenty, it's the really wealthy who manage to avoid it, as well as corporations.

Sounds like it would benefit you to get rid of the capital gains loophole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxes is theft plain and simple.

The rich have money to spare and taxes doesn't affect them.

If things were FAIR, then anyone making less than 100K a year and owning less than 2 million dollars of real estate, would have to pay ZERO TAXES.

So much of this post is insane... But mainly, no, taxes are absolutely not theft. Think of them as a membership fee for being part of a society.

By this logic, everyone should pay for membership. But that's not how our tax regime works. It penalizes the most productive and successful in order to benefit those who contribute the least productivity, for no apparent reason. It also distorts the economy and markets through ever-changing government efforts to apply social engineering through a system of tax-related incentives and disincentives, causing people and businesses to engage in behaviors they otherwise would eschew.

A fair system would be a flat tax where everyone, regardless of income, pays the same rate. People with higher incomes pay more, lower incomes pay less, everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain. The inefficiencies inherent in our convoluted system of deductions, income brackets, credits, and exemptions could be instantly eliminated.

Notwithstanding your obviously incorrect assertions that high income earners are necessarily productive and low income earners do not contribute to society, paying your f—king taxes for the benefit of a country which has allowed you to be financially successful, (relatively) healthy, and (relatively) safe IS NOT A PENALTY!

I really wish we could round up all of you “self-made” producers and drop you off in Somalia. Let’s see how productive you are then.

People with higher incomes are, by definition, more productive. They wouldn't be more highly compensated otherwise. They make more money, spend more money, invest more money, and they pay more taxes. People with lower incomes do less of all those things. It's simple enough.

Not simple at all. You forget the people who have very high incomes from unearned money. They don’t produce anything. And production does not correlate with income.

If you're talking about people who have high income from inheritance, there's barely any of those as a percentage of rich people. This is why you don't see the name Vanderbilt, etc., on the list of the richest people in the world.

But if you're talking about people who are rich through being a business owner, then their income is correlated with production because the only way they make money is when someone buys the good or service their business produces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do well. I am not complaining and feel very fortunate to have two very good paying careers. But we just did our end of year tax analysis with our CPA and our effective tax rate when adding federal plus DC taxes is 45% (36% federal, 9% DC and DC is only "low" because a lot of our income is through a DC C-Corp which is taxes slightly lower at 8.5%).

45% of our income going to taxes. Nearly half of what we take home. And yes -- we are utilizing every single tax strategy under the sun available to us and work with a very good CPA.

So let's change the complaint from "tax the rich" to "tax the billionaires" because the regular rich are playing PLENTY in taxes already. Sigh.

+1

Always have said that---when you add in State taxes, many of us are paying 45%+ on the majority of our income. yes, the first 400K is taxed less, but if you are earning $1.2M, majority is being taxed at the 45%+. Add in medicare tax (almost 2%) and you approach 50%. yes we make a lot, but not in the billions range. It's all wages and interest/dividends (and some Cap gains). So no way to "hide" the income. We are paying plenty, it's the really wealthy who manage to avoid it, as well as corporations.

Sounds like it would benefit you to get rid of the capital gains loophole.

Different poster, but I would love to get rid of the no capital gains tax on inheritances loophole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxes is theft plain and simple.

The rich have money to spare and taxes doesn't affect them.

If things were FAIR, then anyone making less than 100K a year and owning less than 2 million dollars of real estate, would have to pay ZERO TAXES.

So much of this post is insane... But mainly, no, taxes are absolutely not theft. Think of them as a membership fee for being part of a society.

By this logic, everyone should pay for membership. But that's not how our tax regime works. It penalizes the most productive and successful in order to benefit those who contribute the least productivity, for no apparent reason. It also distorts the economy and markets through ever-changing government efforts to apply social engineering through a system of tax-related incentives and disincentives, causing people and businesses to engage in behaviors they otherwise would eschew.

A fair system would be a flat tax where everyone, regardless of income, pays the same rate. People with higher incomes pay more, lower incomes pay less, everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain. The inefficiencies inherent in our convoluted system of deductions, income brackets, credits, and exemptions could be instantly eliminated.

Notwithstanding your obviously incorrect assertions that high income earners are necessarily productive and low income earners do not contribute to society, paying your f—king taxes for the benefit of a country which has allowed you to be financially successful, (relatively) healthy, and (relatively) safe IS NOT A PENALTY!

I really wish we could round up all of you “self-made” producers and drop you off in Somalia. Let’s see how productive you are then.

People with higher incomes are, by definition, more productive. They wouldn't be more highly compensated otherwise. They make more money, spend more money, invest more money, and they pay more taxes. People with lower incomes do less of all those things. It's simple enough.

From an economist's point of view, this is not true. People can only spend so much. It is represented by the economic theory, Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC). The MPC is the fraction of the extra income a household consumes rather than saves as their income rises or Change in Consumption/Change in Disposable Income. In general, as a person's income rises, their basic needs are met, and the utility derived from consuming more goods (the marginal utility of consumption) decreases. This leads to a lower MPC.

A middle-class person's income (say $100,000) is closer to what they need to spend to maintain their lifestyle. They are likely spending 80% to 90% of their $100,000 income. The wealthy person (Billionaire), on the other hand, reaches a saturation point of personal spending. A family might buy three homes, a yacht, and luxury goods, but the absolute amount of money they can spend on consumption (as opposed to saving or financial investing) is not proportional to their $10 million income. Even if they spend $1,000,000 on consumption, that is only 10% of their income, leaving 90% ($~9,000,000) to be saved or invested.

A dollar in the hands of a person with a high MPC (middle class) will be spent almost immediately, creating a powerful multiplier effect and boosting Aggregate Demand for goods and services. A dollar earned by a person with a low MPC (the wealthy) is far more likely to be saved.

When the wealthy save large portions of their income, it represents money that is not immediately cycling through the economy to pay for goods, services, and wages. While savings eventually enter the economy as investment, the immediate demand stimulus is diminished. Therefore, a high concentration of income among those with a low MPC (Billionaires) is seriously detrimental to overall economic growth.

The wealthy might spend more in absolute terms, but on aggregate, a healthy middle class spends more than 1 billionaire and it is much better for the economy as a whole to have a large middle class and no billionaires.

[Anonymous]

It's the same too when you look at corporate consolidation. When a few companies consolidate, you may get more efficiencies. When so many companies consolidate - like now - you have stagnation. If there are 10 grocery stores, and they each hire 1 president, 1 vice-president and 10 managers - you get 12 people per company all earning salaries and consuming - 120 people. But now you have consolidated those grocery store companies. There are now 2 companies and each hires 1 president, 1 vice president and 10 managers. You now have 12 people per company but only 24 jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do well. I am not complaining and feel very fortunate to have two very good paying careers. But we just did our end of year tax analysis with our CPA and our effective tax rate when adding federal plus DC taxes is 45% (36% federal, 9% DC and DC is only "low" because a lot of our income is through a DC C-Corp which is taxes slightly lower at 8.5%).

45% of our income going to taxes. Nearly half of what we take home. And yes -- we are utilizing every single tax strategy under the sun available to us and work with a very good CPA.

So let's change the complaint from "tax the rich" to "tax the billionaires" because the regular rich are playing PLENTY in taxes already. Sigh.

If you are married filing jointly, in 2025 you will pay $202,155 on income up to $751,601, for an effective federal income tax rate of less than 27%. Above that threshold, income is taxed at 37%. To get to an effective rate of 36%, your income would have to be well into the seven digits. For example, at $2m in *taxable* income, the effective federal income tax rate is 33.2%. And that's just taxable income, not taking into account the tax avoidance strategies available to the rich. And sure, I know one of you probably is a biglaw partner, so there are some extras thrown in there, but they are rounding errors at that level (although maybe not, since you only reference paying taxes in one state).

All this is by way of saying, (i) yes, billionaires should be taxed more, but (ii) no, your tax "burden" is not the least bit unfair, and really should be increased. FFS.

Also, your cute "we do well" was a nice try at making others assume you made $500k or so. But in reality, you are in the top 0.1% of HHI in the country, as is readily apparent to anyone who can do 5th grade math.

Finally, you are most definitely complaining. If you must, do it at the country club among your fellow travelers.

well someone making $1-1.5M+ is taxed at a high rate, especially when you include 1.8% for medicare and high state taxes as well. And it is us who are actually paying way more than our "fair share" of taxes for decades. We have no way to "hide" anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I paid $8 M in federal estate taxes last year.

There are all kinds of trusts and other strategies to avoid this. Seems like it would have been worth it for your parents to have spent say $200k to set this up, considering based on the amount of tax paid the estate was probably like $50MM

It’s not as easy as it looks to avoid all taxes. It’s easy to go over the $14 million dollar lifetime gift exemption if you’re in the 1%. Even with 8 different trusts that are used for 8 different reasons it’s tough to avoid some estate tax. Unless you’re a billionaire.

+1

Some of us live in states with a high state estate tax as well, so when majority of our estate would be taxed at 30-40% (yes that high at the state level), we will do everything in our power to ensure we use trust and any legal method possible to avoid that.
We are not billionaires, we earned our wealth all on our own (no family help) but we plan to ensure future generations are well taken care of and we don't need to pay more taxes on it to the fed and state govt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do well. I am not complaining and feel very fortunate to have two very good paying careers. But we just did our end of year tax analysis with our CPA and our effective tax rate when adding federal plus DC taxes is 45% (36% federal, 9% DC and DC is only "low" because a lot of our income is through a DC C-Corp which is taxes slightly lower at 8.5%).

45% of our income going to taxes. Nearly half of what we take home. And yes -- we are utilizing every single tax strategy under the sun available to us and work with a very good CPA.

So let's change the complaint from "tax the rich" to "tax the billionaires" because the regular rich are playing PLENTY in taxes already. Sigh.

+1

Always have said that---when you add in State taxes, many of us are paying 45%+ on the majority of our income. yes, the first 400K is taxed less, but if you are earning $1.2M, majority is being taxed at the 45%+. Add in medicare tax (almost 2%) and you approach 50%. yes we make a lot, but not in the billions range. It's all wages and interest/dividends (and some Cap gains). So no way to "hide" the income. We are paying plenty, it's the really wealthy who manage to avoid it, as well as corporations.

Sounds like it would benefit you to get rid of the capital gains loophole.

Different poster, but I would love to get rid of the no capital gains tax on inheritances loophole.

Heck, I'd love to get rid of estate taxes at the fed and state level. Until then we will use trusts and gift all our kids/their spouses/grandkids/etc $18K from each of us yearly to spend it down (not that it will help much)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Helping your kids through grad school is a privilege reserved for the UMC. People like you should be taxed more. Only taxing the “rich” isn’t enough.

Ummm..nope, that is called "planning". We started saving for undergrad when we only had $200K (30 years ago) income. And we didn't start "Splurging in life" until we had enough saved for both kids to attend undergrad fully paid...that was done by age 10 and 8 for the kids. Then we continued to add a bit and let it grow for 10+ years to fund grad school.
But we scrimped and saved and lived a much lower "lifestyle" until 35+ so we could be financially set education wise. We bought a house for 50% of what the bank said we could afford in our early 30s (2nd house in our life), rather than splurging and spending more. It meant we could also afford to vacation and eat out and provide activities for our kids also while saving for retirement and their college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do well. I am not complaining and feel very fortunate to have two very good paying careers. But we just did our end of year tax analysis with our CPA and our effective tax rate when adding federal plus DC taxes is 45% (36% federal, 9% DC and DC is only "low" because a lot of our income is through a DC C-Corp which is taxes slightly lower at 8.5%).

45% of our income going to taxes. Nearly half of what we take home. And yes -- we are utilizing every single tax strategy under the sun available to us and work with a very good CPA.

So let's change the complaint from "tax the rich" to "tax the billionaires" because the regular rich are playing PLENTY in taxes already. Sigh.

+1

Always have said that---when you add in State taxes, many of us are paying 45%+ on the majority of our income. yes, the first 400K is taxed less, but if you are earning $1.2M, majority is being taxed at the 45%+. Add in medicare tax (almost 2%) and you approach 50%. yes we make a lot, but not in the billions range. It's all wages and interest/dividends (and some Cap gains). So no way to "hide" the income. We are paying plenty, it's the really wealthy who manage to avoid it, as well as corporations.

Sounds like it would benefit you to get rid of the capital gains loophole.

Different poster, but I would love to get rid of the no capital gains tax on inheritances loophole.

Yes. That should be taxed at the normal income rates, along with dividends and the sale of stock, property, and other assets.