from Hacker News

I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

by loisaidasam on 6/25/19, 7:55 PM with 94 comments

• by supergauntlet on 6/25/19, 8:21 PM

  Sounds just like Warren Buffett: http://money.com/money/5636661/buffett-wants-to-tax-rich-mor...

  Reminder that during the time generally pointed to as 'the good old days' (the 1950s) the top tax bracket was 85% (!): https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Feder...

  Now, this doesn't directly translate to higher taxes on the wealthy (there are a lot of factors that go into effective tax rate) but it puts the handwringing around AOC's 70% top tax bracket in perspective.

• by Causality1 on 6/25/19, 8:33 PM

  It's always been fascinating to me that "things that poor people spend most of their money on" is subject to a sales tax but "things rich people spend most of their money on" isn't.

  Services from beauty shops, car repair, home maintenance and repair? Taxed. Services from lawyers and accountants? Not taxed.

  Buying a TV, food, gasoline? Taxed. Buying a piece of land or stocks? Not taxed.

• by iambvk on 6/25/19, 8:29 PM

  IMO, their taxable "income" is typically very less.

• by slang800 on 6/25/19, 8:27 PM

  This is a great idea, but Eli doesn't need to wait for the law to be changed. He can donate as much as he wants directly to the US government right now. https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html

• by yitchelle on 6/25/19, 8:31 PM

  Can't they just pay more tax dollars that is higher than they are obliged to pay? I guess this is America.

• by gridlockd on 6/25/19, 8:31 PM

  That's an admirable expression of morals, but everyone with a calculator figure out that the 1% don't have enough money to pay for a welfare state.

  The plain truth is, if you want a welfare state, the middle class has to pay for it:

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/demo...

  I was really glad to find the Washington Post publish this. Perhaps it will wake up some people to the questionable promises that certain Democrats are espousing currently.

  (The wording of this comment was edited to cause less offense)

• by jsnk on 6/25/19, 8:23 PM

  Does IRS prohibit people from paying extra in tax if they want to?

• by youareawesome on 6/25/19, 8:26 PM

  If you took the total combined wealth of the wealthiest 100 Americans, you wouldn't be able to fund the federal government for more than half a year or so.

  Taxing the rich sounds nice as virtuous political rhetoric but it won't effectively address poverty, just further erodes the liberty of private citizens. If you want to fund more social programs then tax corporations, like the oil companies and the large investment firms, like ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. Don't punish success.

• by xvedejas on 6/25/19, 8:36 PM

  But why raise income or wealth taxes when you can raise land value taxes or carbon/pollution taxes instead? My income does not harm anyone else, nor does being wealthy. But my hoarding of land does exclude land from others. My release of carbon / pollution into the atmosphere even more obviously harms other people. I think we're doing a huge disservice taxing the wrong things, when there are things that are useful to tax (apart from the government revenue).

  This is why I think we should lower (or remove) income taxes -- because we could raise the same amount in more useful ways. I think there are also economic reasons to believe income taxes make the labor market less efficient. If your goal is to tackle inequality, why insist on doing it in a sub-optimal way? It absolutely matters not just how much you tax and who you tax, but also what you're taxing (and therefore discouraging). Let's start with some revenue-neutral changes to the tax structure. We might see both a stronger economy and less pollution because of it, for free.