At a glance I could see me socking away money and not spending so that I could avoid taxes and then just leaving the country to go spend my dragon hoard.
fail-deadly- on
That’s fine, just make sure we are accounting for everything people buy, including stocks, bonds, artwork, real estate, derivatives, etc. and not just things like groceries and clothes.
chronoit on
Regressive taxation that impacts people who spend a larger percentage of what they earn on necessities. I.e poor and middle class.
Would be a massive tax break for high earners.
crohnscyclist on
Someone who makes minimum wage spends every last dime just to get by, this every dime is taxed. Elon musk would have to spend $1,917,000 every day FOR THE NEXT 1000 YEARS to spend down his net worth of 700 billion and that’s assuming he makes zero gains on that net worth just in interest.
kurttheflirt on
This has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Perverse incentives that would destroy the economy. Would punish the lowest earners who simply have to spend to survive. And then would incentive the highest to spend less and not put their money back into the economy.
themiracy on
The argument has merit – but how would a progressive consumption tax work in practice? Would it occur at the point of sale/transaction? How would the system allow for knowing what tax to charge someone without getting into a privacy quagmire (with respect to disclosing your annual consumption to various and sundry people at POS, WRT disclosing your spending habits to the government not so much in terms of total value but in terms of what you buy)? Particularly in an era of increasingly intrusive governments not just in the US (particularly in the US at the moment) but also elsewhere?
Deofol7 on
We learned about regressive taxation in high school. How anyone aside from a billionaire can think that this is a good idea and would benefit them is beyond me.
Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Christmas!
fish1900 on
Its called a VAT and every country other than the US has one.
Quite frankly, the US not having one has done it a disservice and harmed the overall economic standing of the country. We shouldn’t just have a VAT but a layered system of VAT + progressive income tax + capital gains taxes (like most countries) is the way to go.
8 Comments
At a glance I could see me socking away money and not spending so that I could avoid taxes and then just leaving the country to go spend my dragon hoard.
That’s fine, just make sure we are accounting for everything people buy, including stocks, bonds, artwork, real estate, derivatives, etc. and not just things like groceries and clothes.
Regressive taxation that impacts people who spend a larger percentage of what they earn on necessities. I.e poor and middle class.
Would be a massive tax break for high earners.
Someone who makes minimum wage spends every last dime just to get by, this every dime is taxed. Elon musk would have to spend $1,917,000 every day FOR THE NEXT 1000 YEARS to spend down his net worth of 700 billion and that’s assuming he makes zero gains on that net worth just in interest.
This has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Perverse incentives that would destroy the economy. Would punish the lowest earners who simply have to spend to survive. And then would incentive the highest to spend less and not put their money back into the economy.
The argument has merit – but how would a progressive consumption tax work in practice? Would it occur at the point of sale/transaction? How would the system allow for knowing what tax to charge someone without getting into a privacy quagmire (with respect to disclosing your annual consumption to various and sundry people at POS, WRT disclosing your spending habits to the government not so much in terms of total value but in terms of what you buy)? Particularly in an era of increasingly intrusive governments not just in the US (particularly in the US at the moment) but also elsewhere?
We learned about regressive taxation in high school. How anyone aside from a billionaire can think that this is a good idea and would benefit them is beyond me.
Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Christmas!
Its called a VAT and every country other than the US has one.
Quite frankly, the US not having one has done it a disservice and harmed the overall economic standing of the country. We shouldn’t just have a VAT but a layered system of VAT + progressive income tax + capital gains taxes (like most countries) is the way to go.