Leaving that aside, the 1% pay 38.5% of taxes, which seems quite fair as is. We already tax the rich quite heavily.
I'd rather the focus be on compliance. Close the loopholes and catch the tax evaders.
Wealth taxes, if you look at examples elsewhere both present and historically, are hard to do well. I worry the government is not sufficiently competent ( now or in the future) to implement it correctly and it does more harm than good. It's very easy to drive capital offshore and take the potential investment and job creation with it.
Given the fact the top 1% hold 43% of the global wealth I think they aren't paying their fair share...
There is no need for someone to have 100 billion dollars they an struggle by with 10 billion easy enough .. or even 1 billion
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/top-1-percent-of-household...
Us? The people? That's how you do decisions in a democracy.
And obviously funnelling all that money and economic capital to some central state isn't gonna go well so levels below and above the state need to be reinforced.
Money at the top levels is not at all like money for the rest of us. For a middle class citizen, money is about consumption and freedom to do what you want (with enough of it).
At the top end of the distribution, money is no longer about consumption or freedom (since you can never realistically consume as much as they have, and you don't have to work after you've saved like $10M). Money at that level is a proxy for power - a group of oligarchs can basically have the power of a shadow government, but unelected. And the real question to ask is "how much power/leverage do we want an individual (or a group of rich oligarchs) to have in a democracy."
So taxing the rich is not even about spreading the wealth, necessarily - if you redistributed it directly you might get inflation by redirecting investment money into consumption. It's more about limiting the amount of power that a person can accumulate over others.
Does this not beg the question why not just limit power itself rather than limiting wealth with the target side effect that the wealthy will not easily purchase power as a result?
Why is almost the entire species seemingly addicted to the idea that the power itself is not the problem? You can erect regulations on the corrosive influence of money in politics until the cows come home but as long as the ROI on lobbying is positive, it's a given that's going to be the result.
On the other hand when there's no power to buy nobody buys it by definition. Adjust above extreme observation appropriately in order to justify the minimal possible tolerable conglomeration of power availability in any given system to find whatever tolerable level the reader ends up comfortable with. Or viewed uncharitably, arrive at the conclusion that's exactly what's already happened and the human affliction of slavish devotion to power is near universal and continuously growing and there's no way to escape it short of completely opting out of modern global civilization given the observed distribution of the population constantly seeking to increase it.
An extreme example of this would be a dictatorial regime where control of the government becomes a life-or-death concern for warring groups.
Are there any credible studies on what would happen?
What about if you capped everyone’s net worth at 10m? Would that impact on the economy directly (e.g destroying money)?
But if you implement higher taxes at the to end, past what point do those people just leave, or leave on paper. There is an inflection point where the tax would actually do more harm than good. And nobody knows where it is. I'd like to see us get closer to it though, there is room to raise taxes on the very wealthy.
A bigger problem at that level is loopholes and compliance though.
If I make $400K and I only need $75K to live, the burden of my taxes is negligible.
If however I make $80K and I need $75K to live, taxes are an unimaginable burden.
We fix the problem by evening out the burden, forget about loopholes, eliminate all but 2 deductions, dependents and primary residence, that's it.
Because the deductions have been eliminated lower the tax rate for each bracket to the effective tax paid for each bracket, the IRS has this data.
Then end capital gains tax, all income is taxed as earned income.
These changes will give 99+% of the population a tax break, and it will simplify taxes drastically for everyone.
The final step is to add 2 new brackets,
>$5M with a tax of 45% >$10M with a tax of 69%
The rich won't need to be making decision about if and when to eat, but the burden of taxes will get leveled out.
We'll also have enough money to pay for Universal Healthcare, and probably college tuition for everyone.
Go lookup the charts for income inequality for the U.S. When the GOP tax cuts from Reagan's first term took effect the income inequality gap started in earnest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...
Wealthy people can keep their money growing inside a corporation essentially forever. It never becomes “income”; instead they just borrow against the assets at exceedingly low rates of interest as well as classifying personal consumption items (like a private jet) as a corporate expense.
It’s possible to keep doing this until death, or even longer.
I agree with the general sentiment of your post (though I disagree that capital and labour should be taxed the same way). I'll also add the following: implement an LVT. It is the most economically “efficient” tax there is, and morally perfect at the same time. Then with the money you collect through LVT you can lower income tax.
If you include transfer like EITC, the US tax code is highly progressive and the tax burden on low income earners has only gotten less (e.g. Trump’s doubling of the standard deduction).
I would argue your plan to “fix” the tax code is already flawed if the basis of your changes is wrong.
maybe they are because conservatives design it that way? irs dont go after big corps because of luck of funds
