Slashdot Mirror

False, they do get Federal benefits:

Read your own damn link. They don't get federal benefits until they've lived in the US as a legal permanent resident for 5 years. That's the same requirement as getting citizenship.

Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for a handful of benefits that are deemed necessary to protect life or guarantee safety in dire situations, such as emergency Medicaid, access to treatment in hospital emergency rooms, or access to healthcare and nutrition programs under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

That's not welfare. Even tourists get that. Even you get that if you got injured in another country, even in a lot of third world countries. I'll give you WIC, but at $5.3 billion, most of it going to citizens, it's not relevant to the discussion.

So then let's compare Helsinki and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. We find that Los Angeles is more expensive than Helsinki. Again, the facts are that if you do UBI in the US, you'll need to spend a lot more to have "parity" with this experiment. For the LA/Helsinki comparison, it would be about 35% more - so about $1000 per month to equalize the data.

What's wrong with Jackson, MS? Too cheap? There's even cheaper cities in the US, and even more cheap small towns. Also, LA is a lot smaller than NY.

If you wanted a cherrypicked city, you should've picked Menlo Park. UBI would have to be in the $10k / month range to support someone living next to Mr. Zuckerberg.

And let's say that of the 217 million 18-to-65 adults in the US, only 180 million are citizens. So we need to provide $90 billion a month in UBI. Guaranteed spending. Over $1 trillion annually. That's the plan?

Remember, the Federal Government took in $1.4 trillion total in income taxes in 2018. So we'll need to up the tax rates by a solid 80% - meaning your Federal income tax load just about doubled. Ready for that?

So you don't want to cut any existing programs? Seems like you're proposing a doomed-to-fail strawman plan just so you can win an argument.

UBI doesn't go into a black hole. It's subject to income tax. A lot of people would get UBI, but then immediately pay a third of it back in taxes. It's also subject to sales tax when it gets spent, and later on, when the store pays its employees, it's taxed again. You can easily stay revenue neutral by raising taxes just enough that on average nobody is getting any benefit from UBI (yes, the math works, just think about it for a second).

UBI is not magical, it's simply a transfer of spending power from the richest to the poorest. It's just more efficient than existing programs.

That's pretty misleading. They use it twice as often. It doesn't mean they're using twice as much. They also don't qualify for federal benefits until they're almost able to get citizenship, so it's not relevant to this discussion.

False, they do get Federal benefits:

Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for a handful of benefits that are deemed necessary to protect life or guarantee safety in dire situations, such as emergency Medicaid, access to treatment in hospital emergency rooms, or access to healthcare and nutrition programs under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

You need to compare different states. CoL in Mississippi is a lot lower than California. Since we're talking about federal UBI, nothing prevents those who find it too difficult to live on $500 / mo. in San Francisco from moving to Jackson.

So then let's compare Helsinki and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. We find that Los Angeles is more expensive than Helsinki. Again, the facts are that if you do UBI in the US, you'll need to spend a lot more to have "parity" with this experiment. For the LA/Helsinki comparison, it would be about 35% more - so about $1000 per month to equalize the data.

We already spend on welfare at the state level. That spending can be used by each individual to supplement UBI from the federal level to reach a livable income. E.g. if states already provides $200 / month in food assistance, then the federal government only needs to spend $300 for a combined total of $500.

Except we need to spend quite a bit more than $500. But let's say it's just $500. And let's say that of the 217 million 18-to-65 adults in the US, only 180 million are citizens. So we need to provide $90 billion a month in UBI. Guaranteed spending. Over $1 trillion annually. That's the plan?

Remember, the Federal Government took in $1.4 trillion total in income taxes in 2018. So we'll need to up the tax rates by a solid 80% - meaning your Federal income tax load just about doubled. Ready for that?

I will NOT settle and be happy for "what I have", I will take what I earn.

Blame taxes. Per capita, and adjusted for inflation, the average US taxpayer now pays about 50% more than what they did, back in 1960.

Federal income taxes in 1960 were $41 billion, in 2012 it was $1.13 trillion - that's a 30X increase. The number of tax returns went from 61 million to 145 million. And a dollar in 1960 was worth $7.76 in 2012. Add that all up, and the average taxpayer is paying about 50% more than they did back in the day.

And that is just Federal income taxes. State taxes have gone up, and of course Social Security/Medicare has more than doubled from 3% to 8%. Combine all that together, and the average person is paying quite a bit more in income taxes today, and that does not help with the situation at all.

Here you go. Seriously, do you think it's a good idea to tax a company when they don't even make a profit? You're a new startup, you have $250,000 in expenses, you made $200,000 in revenue, meaning a gross loss of $50,000 (and an even greater net loss, most assuredly). AND you get to pay a nice tax on that $200,000 in revenue.

Your income tax is NOT based that way. You have deductions, don't you? If you have negative income throughout the year - you don't pay income taxes. If you earned $5,000 - well below the standardized deduction - should you pay income tax? No? Then why should a company pay when it has zero net income as well?

I believe the Politifact article you are referring to is: here. If this is not your article, please provide a link. This link shows your post to either be confused or full of carefully constructed half truths.

Your list of net givers appears to be taken from the figure from the California Legislative Analyst's Office, January 2017 (original). If so, you are reading that figure wrong. That is the per capita federal spending in the state - what the feds send back, not the net transfer.

Much of the original discussion around this started with a study from The Tax Foundation. Characterizations of this group range from neutral/non-partisan to fiscal conservative/business friendly. That study listed the top ten givers as:

Colorado: $0.81
New York: $0.79
California: $0.78
Delaware: $0.77
Illinois: $0.75
Minnesota: $0.72
New Hampshire: $0.71
Connecticut: $0.69
Nevada: $0.65
New Jersey: $0.61

and takers as

New Mexico: $2.03
Mississippi: $2.02
Alaska: $1.84
Louisiana: $1.78
West Virginia: $1.76
North Dakota: $1.68
Alabama: $1.66
South Dakota: $1.53
Kentucky: $1.51
Virginia: $1.51

But that's from 2005, and the California report I linked to above said they had questions about its methodology around estimating taxes paid by Californians.

WalletHub put out an analysis last year on "2018’s Most & Least Federally Dependent States." That list is largely similar, but with California buried at (gasp!) #39.

I have better things to do on a Saturday than correct people on the Internet, but if you'd actually like to have an informed discussion, we can pull data from the IRS and understand why PolitiFact's conclusion was there isn't a simple answer.

The top 1% of income earners pay 39.48% of federal income taxes (2x their share of gross income), the top 10% cover 70.88% of them and the top 50% pay 97.25%. So it's not like people with a higher than average income aren't covering the vast majority of income taxes.

Yeah, there are some super-wealthy who have an ownership model which minimizes their taxes to a certain extent, but when the bottom 50% of income earners are the ones who only pays 2.75% of the total income taxes, it's going to be tough to make an argument that the "rich" aren't paying much income tax.

That said, federal corporate taxes are just passed down on employees (who can't either invest in a different country's capital market, nor buy from an out of country supplier like a consumer can). In the specific case of Amazon, their taxes are low because they've lost money (ignore the pretend accounting "profit" reported) for their shareholders by taking some of the shareholder's value in the form of stock options and giving it as an expense to their employees, which makes the shareholders' shares less valuable, but has the side benefit of aligning employee incentives better with the incentives shareholders would like them to have.

The top 1% of income earners still pay 39.48% of federal income taxes (2x their share of gross income), the top 10% cover 70.88% of them and the top 50% pay 97.25%. So it's not like people with a higher than average income aren't already covering the vast majority of income taxes.

Yeah, there are some super-wealthy who have an ownership model which minimizes their taxes to a certain extent, but when the bottom 50% of income earners only pays 2.75% of the total income taxes, it's going to be tough to make an argument that the "rich" aren't paying income tax.

The top 1% earn 20% of the wealth and pay 40% of the taxes.

Cite:
https://taxfoundation.org/summ...

They already pay double their "fair share". The people in the top 5% to 10% pay their "fair share" being about 10% of the wages earned and taxes paid, these are people that earn between about $130,000 to $190,000 per year.

The bottom 90% are enjoying the returns on other people's money in government services.

Based on the whole of the world anyone in the USA is likely in the top 1% of wage earners. If any American wants to complain about the top 1% of the wealthy then look in a mirror while you scream. If you have a computer to see this internet forum then you are most very likely in the global 1%.

"If we raise taxes the money moves out" is such a bad argument.

It is essentially saying that we should let them get away with not paying taxes because otherwise they might try to evade the taxes.
That isn't a good reason to make it easy for them.

It is also a good idea to keep in mind that:

If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.

Also, the average tax paid for the top 1 percent in the 1950's was 42% not 90.

That is pretty dishonest. The marginal tax rate was still 70%, but as usual nitwits doesn't realize that the 70% only is applied to the value over the threshold.
A marginal tax rate of 70% isn't incompatible with an average paid tax of 42%.

You mean like the 1950s?

It is much easier for capital to move around than in the 1950's. Even the SPLC moved millions to offshore tax havens. Money moves faster (hello bitcoin). Faster than a government can tax. Even if a government taxes more doesn't mean increase revenue. It's a great talking point to hear about when we had a higher tax rate but many things have changed since then but many things are still the same (raising taxes doesn't mean raising revenue).

Now when talking about taxes, what percentage should the 1% represent in government revenue? From that FreeBeacon link, "New York has the second highest combined state and local tax rate for high-income earners, and nearly half of the state's income tax revenue comes from the top 1 percent.". I think the same is true for federal taxes. The rich, right now, represent roughly half of all revenue for government. Why is that not enough? Taxing more doesn't solve problems like a magic bullet. The 1% do not face usually low tax burden by historical standards.

Also, the average tax paid for the top 1 percent in the 1950's was 42% not 90.

Modded down for telling the truth. Effective Federal income tax rates in the 1950s (with those high marginal rates) were lower than today, and the Federal Government under Eisenhower had about half the income it does today, per capita and adjusted for inflation. The problem isn't not enough taxation - the problem is way too much spending. Over $13,000 annually by the Federal Government alone for every man, woman, and child in These United States.

You mean like North Carolina, on it's third consecutive year of large budget surpluses?

You need to get out of your bubble more.

Also, I hate to break it to you, but California government has been controlled by Democrats for far longer than they've had an officially balanced budget. It's still not balanced if you actually account for public employee pension obligations in a reasonable manner:

California continues to suffer the highest rates of poverty, child poverty, homelessness and unsheltered homelessness in the country. California continues to rank near the bottom on national education tests while failing to educate the majority of students to meet statewide standards on English and mathematics.

For all the talk of balance, California continues its long march toward devoting greater resources to pensions. According to a report released last year by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, while state contributions to pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS were just $1.6 billion in 2002-03, they are on track to hit $19.5 billion by 2029-30. And that’s just at the state level; the problem is just as bad or worse for counties, cities and school districts.

In the US, we do not tax wealth; we tax income. If you look at the actual data you will see the top 1% make about 20% of all the income, but pay 40% of all income taxes. Wealth isn't taxed; income is. If you want to argue for a wealth tax, then do that - otherwise you're just trying to stir up some class-envy to bolster your incorrect argument.

Capital gains taxes for short-term (less than 1 year) gains are the same as ordinary income. Long term capital gains (more than 1 year held) can be lower, but still is not tax-free. It's there to encourage long-term investments and savings - which I would think would be beneficial to society? Or should we encourage all investors to only see short-term gains, in-and-out, churn the funds and eschew long-term stability?

Social Security is capped in terms of benefits, which is why contributions are also capped. You are really mistaken here, stating there is no cap on social security contributions.

For protection, we already tax property on its assessed value. The person with the $500,000 home pays, on average, twice the property tax as the person with a $250,000 home. The more expensive car has higher tabs/registration rates. And those tax payments are what covers things like police, fire, roads, schools, and so on. Federal taxes you on how much you make, so if you make more you pay more (and it's progressive - your payment rate goes from essentially zero income tax to quite high). If anything, it appears the original GP was correct - the more you make, the more you pay, and disproportionately so. Even taxes on Social Security benefits are also progressive and tax the higher income earner at an even higher rate.

So let's cut to the chase - what should the tax rate be? Should it be on income? Should it be on wealth? Who gets away with paying zero, who gets to pay more?

Facebook's income taxes. In 2017 they paid about $5 billion in income taxes, and $4.6 billion of those were in the US. Their revenue and net profit for 2017 was $40 billion and $16 billion, respectively. So they paid about a 24% income tax rate ($5 billion of $21 billion, giving a net $16 billion). That's higher than the average of the EU at ~19%, and hs quite a way from "virtually no tax".

What taxes were selectively set based upon industries? Who didn't get a tax cut last year? And how do you solve the issue of Social Security (which is deep in deficit spending), or Medicare? Do you realize that about 70% of all Federal spending is on social welfare and pensions?

Poverty is defined as about $12,000 per year for a single person. Assume we wish to set UBI at 125% of poverty level - about $15,000 per year. The AGI for the bottom 50% of all taxpayers averages out to about $16,000 (divide their income by number of returns). Assume it's a normal distribution. This means about 25% of all working people earn about 125% of poverty levels.

For 25% of the population, it would be better to simply stop working and collect UBI - there would be no net change to their situation. So we have, effectively, 3 people working to support 1 person not working, meaning an additional $400 per month per worker to support the UBI situation. How many more will simply opt-out and take UBI-only because the additional $5000/year in taxes is simply too much?

The top 1% earn about $1.5 million on average; the top 25% average about $139,000. And that is several tiers down...

The median and mean household income is also quite close, being around $75,000 and $72,000 respectively.

I know it's popular to push a "hate the rich" meme on many places, but the data does not support the huge income disparity so often claimed. Median and mean incomes are close together, income disparity from the top 1% down to the bottom 50% is about 80 (which is significantly less than your estimate of 300 from the top 1% to the next tier, which would be top 5%), and in general wages are up an average of 4% annually for the last 18 months or so.

Here is the actual data about taxation and the 1%; what would you change, given they are taxed at a rate over twice that of their share of income (40% of income taxes, 20% of income) and at a rate well ahead of any other group?

You might want to see who really pays the income tax in the US. It actually is the rich, paying well more than their "fair share", unless you mean they should pay a much higher share of income taxes as compared to their share of total income.

he understands that he needs socialized medicine or he dies.

Socialized medicine could provide him with insulin paid for by taxpayers, who did not consent to the amount the IRS confiscated from them. (Indeed, even those who call for higher tax rates hire accountants, or meticulously go through tax-prep apps, to minimize their own personal tax bill.)

Or, private charity could provide him with insulin paid for by people who provided the funds voluntarily.

You might think that voluntary charitable contributions could never grow large enough to replace the nanny state. That would be wrong. Year after year, the amount Americans donate to charity breaks the record set the previous year. It grows faster than GDP grows, for reasons I won't get into in this post. In 2017, the amount was $410 billion -- which is within the same order of magnitude as the coercive (and highly inefficient) government wealth redistribution programs.

Within our lifetime, we might see voluntary charitable contributions exceed the size of coercive government wealth redistribution programs. Even though this would result in a much more robust social safety net, some people loathe the thought that government would no longer have control over the social safety net.

Three things prevent charitable contributions from growing even faster than they do now (thereby delaying the day when the nanny state is no longer needed) -- and all three are related to taxation.

1. The tax rate directly affects charitable contributions. When people receive a tax cut, yes, they keep most of the cut for themselves, but they also give more to charity than they otherwise would have. If you take into account the fact that private charities create social good vastly more efficiently than government social programs do, cuts to the government programs do not cause proportional reductions in social good, and in some cases may even cause net increases.

2. The tax rate indirectly affects charitable contributions, because lower taxes result in higher GDP growth, and more charitable contributions that arise from that GDP growth. (No, I'm not an anarchist who believes the tax rate should be cut all the way to zero. But I suspect we are far from the "sweet spot" that maximizes GDP growth and the growth of charitable contributions.)

3. We're held back by the attitude that "federal, state and local governments are already taxing me, and in the aggregate transferring over $2 trillion per year from the top 40% to the bottom 60%, so why should I give more to charity?" All of us suffer from this transference of social responsibility -- away from individuals, and onto faceless bureaucrats -- to one extent or another.

And the socialized military.

Great idea! Finance the military directly from the wealth it protects. Rich people will think twice about starting wars when they have to finance them 100%.

The socialized police.

Not a function of the federal government.

The socialized education system.

The one where the rich get a better education than the poor? That doesn't sound very socialized to me!

Certainly get rid of the socialized IRS

Yes! Send each state a bill for services rendered. Most red states (excluding Texas) will be forced to raise their taxes to make up the lost subsidy from blue states. Can we kick out from the union any state that goes bankrupt?

Yep. Not very friendly at all. Imagine how much bigger it could be if the State was business-friendly? Many companies stay in spite of the business climate, because other intangibles are beneficial (like climate, for example).

IOW, CA has figured out what right wing cranks can not - there is more to economic prosperity than low taxes and weak regulation.

As for being even bigger - CA is resource limited and already crowded, largely with economic and cultural refugees from “business friendly” places.

But I love the argument - “Sure, California is kicking the ass of ‘business friendly’ states. But imagine how much harder they could be kicking ass if they adopted the losing strategy!”

Yep. Not very friendly at all. Imagine how much bigger it could be if the State was business-friendly? Many companies stay in spite of the business climate, because other intangibles are beneficial (like climate, for example).

The top income bracket (the 1%) pulls in about $2 trillion dollars. 0.001% of that gets you $20 million. On an average year, Americans purchase about 17 million vehicles, so your tax will save approximately $1.18 on the sticker price of each vehicle.

Now, if we expand to, say, the top 25% we get a figure of $6.7 trillion. 0.001% of that gets you $67 million, or about $3.94 per car.

"Screw that," you say, "I was just throwing out a number. Increase the tax by 1%". Now we're talking real numbers! A 1% surtax on the top 1% could (theoretically) pull in $20 billion dollars! Split among cars and you get... $1,180 per car. The average car in January 2018 was $36,270, so you would drop that to $35,090.

Whoo hoo! That makes the car only... $180 more than the same car in January 2017. And that's not including the cost to hit the new emissions and safety targets your tax was supposed to cover.

It's a tax on workers, just like SS/Medicare, health insurance requirements, HR paperwork regulations, etc... Almost the entire burden of the taxes, including the supposed "employer's share" are passed on the employees in the form of lower wages.

From the Tax Foundation:

"It turns out that the supply of labor – that is, workers’ willingness to work – is much less sensitive to taxes than the demand for labor – or employers’ willingness to hire. This is because workers who need a job are not as responsive to changes in wages, but businesses are able to “shop around” for the best workers or shift production to different locations."

This view is backed up by the academic papers on the subject. See The Incidence of Payroll Taxation: Evidence from Chile ("I find strong evidence that the incidence of payroll taxation was fully on wages, with no effect on employment") and The Incidence of Mandated Employer-Provided Insurance: Lessons from Workers' Compensation Insurance ("Empirical analysis of two data sets suggests that changes in employers' costs of workers' compensation insurance are largely shifted to employees in the form of lower wages.") and The Labor Market Effects of Rising Health Insurance Premiums ("Thus, rising health insurance premiums may both increase the ranks of the unemployed and place an increasing burden on workers through decreased wages for workers with employer health insurance and decreased hours for workers moved from full time jobs with benefits to part time jobs without. ")

The amazing part of unemployment is how quickly people whose unemployment ends find a job, when they couldn't possibly find one the whole time they were getting paid...

Uh, no. The Tax Foundation report explicitly EXCLUDES all FICA/SSI (see Appendix point 3). This is for income tax only. Add another 15.2% for FICA/SSI, and up to 13.3% for State income tax. If you're a typical high-earner in California (making more than $15K per month), you're probably paying around 45-47% total tax load, before you include State/county/city sales taxes.

While our average income tax rate is about 15% effective, that does not include the 15.2% for FICA and Social Security. Nor State income taxes up to 13.3%, meaning that in the US, an average tax load as paid in Europe would be around 44% for a person living in California (and much higher for someone earning around $10,000 per month - about 50%). Not much different at all.

While our average income tax rate is about 15% effective, that does not include the 15.2% for FICA and Social Security. Nor State income taxes up to 13.3%, meaning that in the US, an average tax load as paid in Europe would be around 44% for a person living in California (and much higher for someone earning around $10,000 per month - about 50%). Not much different at all.

Huh... The top 1% make 20% of all income but pay 40% of all income taxes. Somehow I think they ARE paying income tax. At least, that's what the IRS says...

Deductions massively changed over that time, too... For example, compare 1957 (top tax rate of 90%) to today (top tax rate of 37%). In 1957 the Federal Government collected $36 billion from a population of 172 million - about $209 per person. In 2012, we see it was $1.13 trillion for 314 million people - $3600 per person. Correcting for inflation we see that the Federal Government now makes about twice as much, per capita, than it did in 1957 (which was also the last year the Federal Government ran an actual surplus and paid the debt down).

Think about it - in the bad, old, high statutory rate days, the Federal Government collected about HALF of what it does today. Sure, the nominal rates are lower - but the exemptions are dramatically reduced as well, so that the effective tax rate is quite a bit higher (about 2.1 times higher, in fact).

This is not true - my accounting would become easier since all of my dividend income would become simple income

A pass-through payment for a corporate entity isn't simply the corporation granting you income under contract; you are legally entitled to that income based on your ownership in the company, and the conditions of your income are reported by your partnership in the company. You would have to report Form K-1 to the IRS along with Form 1099-S to describe your share of ownership in the partnership and your income thus derived.

I've had that arrangement before, when I owned CLMT. I handled it by simply not reporting that income to the IRS, since it was like $40 and the IRS does not care (it costs them too much to individually prosecute); my tax software didn't handle it, I didn't understand it the first time, and so I sold all of that stock and skipped it again the next year. I understand it now, but to hell with that. I received the forms well-after I filed my tax returns, too, so they were completed correctly to the best of my knowledge when I sent them in.

Note that the IRS did get some kind of report from the company, so has documentation suggesting I didn't report some small income, and so could come find me and ask; it just costs way too much to bother.

Here's the rub: if it's all passthrough with thousands or millions of shareholders and everyone's little $1,000 or $5,000 holding generating $200 of dividends goes unreported, that's potentially billions of untaxed incomes, and a large cost to collect. It's also a lot of sunk cost in tax filing preparation across the nation for all these individual filers.

Corporate tax rate in the US was 34% or higher last year. Tax paid was around 24%. The delta is what I'm calling loopholes.

Well, you're wrong.

When a corporation purchases a $1M machine, they have a $1M asset. That means if you sell $10M of product, spend $9M on wages and materials and corp-to-corp services, and spend $1M to buy a machine (or office furniture), you don't report $0 profits; you report $1M--you're -$1M cash, +$1M machine.

Now, there's depreciation. Call it a Schedule F 10% per year depreciation down to 10%. That first year, you don't really report $1M profits; you report $0.9M, because $0.1M (10%) goes to depreciation of your machine: it's worth 10% less. Now you have to pay taxes on $0.9M, even though you had $10M of revenues and made $10M of expenses. Fortunately, owner equity is probably up there at this point, so you probably have cash on hand (shareholders are the people who put that cash there to start with) to cover your 35% x $0.9M tax owe.

The next year, you make $10M revenue and spend $9M again. This time you don't buy a machine; yet your machine depreciates by 10% of its original value again. Your machine is now considered $0.8M "in the bank" (it's an asset). Again: you have $1M of profits--this time unspent--and you report $0.9M.

In your first year, you might have a profit of $0(!), and your taxable earnings are $0.9M(!!). In your second, you have a profit of $1M, and your taxable earnings are $0.9M again.

In that second year, you had a 35% CITR, $1M of profits, and paid 31.5% of your profits as taxes. That's 35% of $0.9M.

In both years, you paid $315,000 in taxes, even though in the first year you had less than that in profits.

So, you can obviously see this isn't cheating. The tax rates look strange because they are. Don't ask me wtf to do in that first year; I honestly don't know, because I am not a corporate tax expert and when I did it I was using a different corporate structure than the usual C-Corporation and actually reported negative income and the Government paid me thousands of dollars.

You might enjoy reading up on full expensing, a policy which gets a lot of debate a

Except that our healthcare costs us several times more than it does in countries with socialized medicine.

That's a red herring. Everything in the US costs several times more than it does in other countries. Military expenses, education, healthcare, take your pick. You can't just expect a similar Euro implementation here in the US would just produce cheaper/similar results "because". One big glaring difference is that Euro countries are a hell of alot healthier than we are for one (we have boatloads of money going to pay for heart disease from a fat out-of-shape populace). You don't just implement a new system and "fix" those costs.

Meanwhile, try actually hanging out in a business office for a few days. Just watch and listen. Never again will you be able to claim that business is run efficiently with a straight face.

Uh, try the same in any government office and you'll rapidly get pissed about what your tax dollars are being used for.

Because of multiple insurance companies all with their own huge set of billing procedures, rules, and quirks, medical billing actually requires a 6 month course to absorb the specialized knowledge needed above and beyond being competent in managing accounts receivable

Most of the "procedures, rules, and quirks" you mention are standardized govt regs, like HIPAA protections. That doesn't just go away by swapping insurance companies for govt middle men. Tax law is streamlined to a single govt agency (the IRS). You think that doesn't require a 6 month course to understand? Tax compliance alone is costing us 400 billion a year: https://taxfoundation.org/comp...

That's what you get from govt. Red tape, bureaucracy, and massive overhead costs.

Entrepreneur Peter Barnes has called for the creation of a Sky Trust that would both limit the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and provide revenue from carbon taxes. These "carbon dividends" solve two problems at once: income inequality and climate change. He would also tax corporations for using natural resources, on the thinking that the atmosphere, minerals and fresh water around us represent a "joint inheritance." He would also tax speculative financial transactions and use of the electromagnetic spectrum.

So the idea is to monetize the air, water, and minerals around us, right? And how exactly do you realize the declared value in these 'shared assets'? By consuming them, which means the only way people get the financial benefit is by polluting/consuming precious natural resources... why that's as stupid as funding children's health care by taxing their parents for smoking known carcinogens.

And the rest of the money ends up in the hands of the business owners who take it out via dividends or capital gains. Just like they do now.

News Flash: The 1% do not have incomes to tax.

Crazily, once you get over about 150k p/y and can afford to take advantages of loopholes you pay less of your income as a % in taxes than you do if you make less than that.

Provably false. If you can't even get basic fucking facts right - don't even enter the conversation. In actuality, the higher your income, the MORE taxes you pay - as a percent of income AND in absolute terms. I know it doesn't play to your liberal talking points - but facts are facts, and you need to learn them.

Facts say you are wrong. The top 1% make about 20% of all income, and pay 40% of all income taxes. At least that's what the IRS says - and they're in charge of collecting those taxes. I guess you're talking about the "other" 1%?

Owning a home, even if a creditor forces its sale, provides a financial advantage over renting

They put a $1,200 tax lien on your house and then sell it for $1,200--or less. You get $0.

income tax is only progressive for the folks that get most of their income from actually working

Corporate bonuses, executive perks, any gains from stock sales within 1 year of acquisition, any newly-acquired stock (at its market value upon acquisition) that you don't pay for (executive equity compensation), any physical assets you didn't pay for...

Dividends first get taxed as profits (35%--stupid 21% now), then capital gains (15%), leaving you $55.25 for every $100 of corporate profits disbursed as capital gains.

Of course, owning a house or equity for a few years and then selling it gets you taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%, too. You do have to sell it.

A small group of individuals have a disproportionate amount of taxation at those lower levels, basically people for whom there is one of them for every 1,000 taxpayers. They pay more than the top 5% to top 1%, but a touch less than the top 1% overall.

Nor your defense of such a system, which keeps the working classes just getting by and destroys real opportunities for mobility

Actually, my system ensures that nobody can lose economic upwards mobility by being too poor. The immediate, short-term result is an end to homelessness and hunger; the more continuous result is the creation of employment opportunity and the attached upwards mobility in the greatest proportion directly around the poorest.

Further, the base support--the dividend and minimum wage--increase in direct proportion to the per-capita (per-adult, really) income, thus in practical lockstep with productivity; and the effective income tax rate is set by the taxpayer's income in proportion to per-capita (all population) income, with their income adjusted by an OECD Equivalence Scale based on the number of equivalent adult dependents in the household.

A fair share, fair compensation, and fair taxation.

You seem disinterested in understanding how any such thing would possibly work, however, having already made up your mind without exploration.

Not exactly.

https://taxfoundation.org/stat...

This is just the gas tax, tho. CA also charges sales tax (not included in the totals), and not just on the price of gas, but on the price after all other taxes are tacked onto it.

Corporate income tax collections have kept pace with inflation; individual income taxes have skyrocketed. Your claims are false.

California has the highest US taxes on everything.

Except property taxes!

The reason California taxes everything else so high is partly because of its social and environmental protections, partly because it has such a low property tax and must make up the difference, and partly because it and other blue states subsidize most of the red states.

California's property tax structure is effectively bimodal, i.e., both really expensive and cheap. It all depends on when you bought your home. I pay $12k/year, while my neighbor pays $500/year, even though we have basically the same house. I just happened to buy my house 55 years after he did.

This bimodal property structure also contributes to the housing problem. Senior folks with $500/year property taxes and no mortgage have a big incentive to not sell their homes, thus exacerbating a low-supply market.

California has the highest US taxes on everything.

Except property taxes!

The reason California taxes everything else so high is partly because of its social and environmental protections, partly because it has such a low property tax and must make up the difference, and partly because it and other blue states subsidize most of the red states.

Corporate taxes for the US were amongst the highest in the G20. At least from an objective report based on the tax returns of companies around the world. Unless the tax returns are wrong, or the CBO is wrong...

We've put up with your lies long enough.
Time for you to shut up.
Those are rates that no company pays, you have seen the actual data numerous times now, but each time you deny it, change your story and pretend you knew all along, only to forget again the next time it suits you.

Look at the first pretty picture, it's called chart 1. Have you found it? It's under the heading that says "The U.S. Corporate Tax is a Poor Revenue Collector" It looks like a graph, it's a picture, and it has a few different coloured lines on it. Don't worry it's not too hard, we don't even need to worry about most of the colours.

See the blue line? That is called the 'Statutory Corporate Income Tax Rate'. It's the number that is written down in very important places, and people like you who like to claim American corporate taxes are 'very high' use it to show American taxes are 'very high'. It's nearly 40%, very important people tell us 'it's over 39%' it's 39.1% It does look big doesn't it.

Now see the yellow line underneath it? First thing to notice, is that this yellow line is under the blue line. That means the number for the yellow line is smaller. Second thing to notice is that the yellow line isn't straight like the blue one, it goes up and down. Sometimes it's near the blue line, sometimes it's much lower. This yellow line is the amount of tax American companies actually did pay. It's called 'Effective Corporate Income Tax Rate'

{Smart people can jump ahead now, notice chart 2 (for Canada) has the same blue and yellow lines. But those lines are much closer together. Smart people will notice how Canadian companies often pay a higher percentage of tax, the yellow line, than America. Even though the blue line is higher for America.}

If you haven't realized by now, let me show you. Notice the yellow line in chart 1, see how many times it dips below 25%. Now look at chart 2, this is Canada. See the yellow line here, it is also the actual tax paid by Canadian companies. Notice how many times it dips below 25%. Ok sorry I didn't mean to trick you by throwing you in the deep end. Look again and see that the yellow line never goes under 25%. This means the actual tax rate paid by Canadian companies was always over 25%.

Remember from before that America's yellow line was below 25% quite a bit.

Realize now that even though the blue line for America looks big and scary. Actual companies in America only pay the yellow line. And that yellow line is quite similar to other countries, often it's even smaller. This is because of tax credits, subsidies, tax breaks etc.

Here you go. What is the marginal, average, and effective corporate tax rates for the US and for Canada. For the US it is 39.1%, 29%, and 18.6%. For Canada it is 26.1%, 16.2%, and 8.5%. The latter two - average and effective - are what is really paid after all deductions. For the average rate, the US is about double that of Canada (29% versus 16.2%); for the effective rate, the US is 2.5 times that of Canada (18.6% versus 8.5%). Oh look - I was right, you are wrong. Sucks to be you!

AND ONCE AGAIN, your data is irrelevant! It is about GDP, and it's about investment taxes - NOT corporate income taxes. From the same source, but with CLEAR data about CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES. You have yourself wound up about capital investment tax rates and percent of GDP - neither of which are what are under discussion! If you can't understand that - there's no hope for you. PLEASE Check what you your titles for your own graphs and tables are, and then tell me how it relates to this discussion of CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES. From the same source (Tax Foundation) that states - in my link - that corporate income tax rates (marginal, average, and effective) were all much higher for the US than Canada.

Yes! Look at the link I posted in that you show - it actually states the marginal effective tax rate for the US is 35.3%. Where was I wrong? I simply stated what the AC's (probably you) own source claimed. And showed that it was MUCH higher than Canada. If you're going to try to rebut a point, make sure you have data that actually does that!

What is the maximum Federal income tax rate? HINT: it's not 40%. And the effective Federal income tax rate, for the top 1%, is 27%, which is quite a bit off from 40%. Long term capital gains taxes for the vast majority of people are 0% to 15%. If people did what the AC suggested, they'd probably pay between 15% and 20%, depending upon their level of income.

Here you go. If you'd read the thread, you'd see I've posted it before. It shows marginal (nominal tax rate), average (meaning the tax paid relative to income tax - actual taxes paid, from tax returns), and effective (meaning with all possible deductions factored in). The US is 1st, 3rd, and 4th, respectively. And well above pretty much the entire EU and Canada. The only real world-power economy that is above the US in taxation is Japan - and their economy is in its umpteenth year of stagnation...

A very pretty post, well formatted, lots of words. Did your supervisor finally approve the overtime or did you do this in your own time because you're looking for a raise?

Perhaps your indoctrination was so complete you don't even realize when facts go against what you have been brainwashed into believing.

It's clear that you are unable to comprehend the words, or perhaps they are just unable to sneak into your little fact proof bubble.
But what if we look at the pictures? Maybe your knee jerk reactions can be avoided and a fact or two can sneak in. Possibly you really are a complete idiot, don't worry, use the pictures, and I'll do my best to hold your hand the whole way step by step and guide you into understanding for yourself.

Look at the first pretty picture, it's called chart 1. Have you found it? It's under the heading that says "The U.S. Corporate Tax is a Poor Revenue Collector" It looks like a graph, it's a picture, and it has a few different coloured lines on it. Don't worry it's not too hard, we don't even need to worry about most of the colours.
See the blue line? That is called the 'Statutory Corporate Income Tax Rate'. It's the number that is written down in very important places, and people like you who like to claim American corporate taxes are 'very high' use it to show American taxes are 'very high'. It's nearly 40%, very important people tell us 'it's over 39%' it's 39.1% It does look big doesn't it.
Now see the yellow line underneath it? First thing to notice, is that this yellow line is under the blue line. That means the number for the yellow line is smaller. Second thing to notice is that the yellow line isn't straight like the blue one, it goes up and down. Sometimes it's near the blue line, sometimes it's much lower. This yellow line is the amount of tax American companies actually did pay. It's called 'Effective Corporate Income Tax Rate'

{Smart people can jump ahead now, notice chart 2 (for Canada) has the same blue and yellow lines. But those lines are much closer together. Smart people will notice how Canadian companies often pay a higher percentage of tax, the yellow line, than America. Even though the blue line is higher for America.}

If you haven't realized by now, let me show you. Notice the yellow line in chart 1, see how many times it dips below 25%. Now look at chart 2, this is Canada. See the yellow line here, it is also the actual tax paid by Canadian companies. Notice how many times it dips below 25%. Ok sorry I didn't mean to trick you by throwing you in the deep end. Look again and see that the yellow line never goes under 25%. This means the actual tax rate paid by Canadian companies was always over 25%.
Remember from before that America's yellow line was below 25% quite a bit.
Realize now that even though the blue line for America looks big and scary. Actual companies in America only pay the yellow line. And that yellow line is quite similar to other countries, often it's even smaller. This is because of tax credits, subsidies, tax breaks etc.

No one is going to read this now, being so late and deep. And no one is likely to mod it up, so it will remain hidden.
But the next time you go and try and claim America is a 'very highly taxed country'. Any one can just link to this post. And show that you have had the facts explained to you before, but still choose to believe your lies over the evidence.

In conclusion. Even though America has a high statutory corporate tax rate, actual American companies very rarely pay anything like that amount in actual taxes.

And yet the actual money collected tells a very different story.

The U.S. corporate income tax, as a share of GDP, averaged 2.2 percent of GDP for the 2000 to 2011 period. This is in sharp contrast to its northern neighbor, Canada, which collected far more corporate income tax revenues than the United States at roughly 3.4 percent of GDP during the same period (Chart 2)

https://taxfoundation.org/us-c...

They don't actually pay that because there are so many loopholes deductions and subsidies. They pay a much smaller amount of tax because of this. As shown repeatedly in the data.

That is all the companies in the whole country. Not some made up company that is paying 2.2% of the entire countries GDP in tax. LOL
What single company do you think is paying half a trillion dollars of tax in the US??
You have no idea what you are talking about.

Total company tax actually paid to the US government by all companies is only 2.2% of US GDP
Total company tax actually paid to the Canadian government by all companies is 3.4% of Canadian GDP.
This is also averaged over a decade, not just one year cherry picked to prove a point.
Americans actually don't pay anywhere near the 'effective tax rate' Due to subsidies, deductions, loopholes etc.

Face facts
Lets look at a simple example
2016 GDP 18.6T
2016 Tax on corporate income 400B
Oh look its about 2.2%

And yet the actual money collected tells a very different story.

The U.S. corporate income tax, as a share of GDP, averaged 2.2 percent of GDP for the 2000 to 2011 period. This is in sharp contrast to its northern neighbor, Canada, which collected far more corporate income tax revenues than the United States at roughly 3.4 percent of GDP during the same period (Chart 2)

https://taxfoundation.org/us-c...

They don't actually pay that because there are so many loopholes deductions and subsidies. They pay a much smaller amount of tax because of this. As shown repeatedly in the data.